


Stepping Stones

by red_river



Series: The Other Guardian [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 01:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_river/pseuds/red_river
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. They have almost as far to go toward a relationship never meant to exist, an accidental possibility too sweet to surrender. A collection of moments tracing Sam and Castiel's journey from uncertainty to friendship, and then to the edge of something else. Friendship/pre-slash. Mild AU; part of the Other Guardian 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Warmth I

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [垫脚石/Stepping Stones](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3888058) by [lengyu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lengyu/pseuds/lengyu)



> A/N: This is the third story in The Other Guardian 'verse, a mild AU/canon divergence: After Dean is raised from Hell by Castiel, an entire year passes before the Lilith rises and the seals start to break. During that time, Castiel is assigned to watch over the Winchesters, and finds himself growing closer and closer to Sam. All stories co-written with my friend AccidentaLeft.
> 
> This story follows "Fade to Black," but it isn't necessary to read that first. This will be a multi-chaptered story tracing a series of little moments between Sam and Castiel at the beginning of their relationship, and following the evolution of uncertainty into friendship, and then into something that hangs by a thread, whispering the word /more/. Sam and Cas centric, but Dean often joins in.

Sam stuffed his hands deep in his pockets as he shuffled through the deep snowdrifts of the conifer forest, ducking white pine boughs with every step.  Northern Wisconsin in the winter was turning out to be a major downer; even though it was only afternoon, it was ten degrees past too cold already, and the snow was so deep under the trees that the flakes slid in over the tops of even his enormous boots.  Sam pulled the sides of his coat closer together.  The edges of the puffy blue jacket barely overlapped, forget about zipping, and the cuffs of his brown jacket stuck out awkwardly from the sleeves.

The hunter felt almost as ridiculous as he looked stuffed into the coat two sizes too small, but it was cold enough that they’d been forced to buy an odd assortment of winter clothes at a thrift store—and while Dean could always seem to find something in his size, Sam generally wound up with about what he had on: a puffin coat that bunched around him like the Michelin man, a striped ski hat with a tassel ball on the top, and a pair of gloves with so much lining he couldn’t hope to so much as turn a door handle.

“Horrifying, Sam” had been his brother’s helpful comment as he suited up to leave the cabin they were renting earlier that morning.  “I hope you’re not going to question anyone, dude, because right now _I_ would not talk to you, and I know you, man.”

“Hilarious,” Sam replied, struggling to force his gloved fingers around the doorknob.  “I’m just going to check out the river.”

Dean sat up straighter, and Sam glanced back, catching the concerned look that flitted across his brother’s face.  The tall hunter sighed a little, giving up on the door handle and working the gloves off his fingers.

“Dude, don’t worry,” Sam said. “It’s broad daylight, and I have no intention of actually going out on the ice, so I should be fine.”

Dean’s nose crinkled, and he shook his head, rocking his chair onto its back legs.  “I’m not worried about the ghost, Sammy,” he said. “But there are going to be people at the river.  Seriously—have you seen yourself?”

Sam sighed, holding one fat black glove in the other hand as he finally got the doorknob to turn.  “I can handle it.  Just don’t miss your meeting, _Inspector Waters_. And seriously—bundle up, Dean.  It’s cold.”  As if to prove his point, icy air hissed in as Sam pushed the door open against the wind.  A small flurry of snow burst into the entryway like unwelcome confetti.

“Close the door!” was his brother’s final complaint as Sam slipped out, pushing the heavy door back into its frame.

It took a minute to get his gloves back on—mostly because trying to force his fingers down into the two-sizes-too-small accessories was like trying to shove his hand into a wet plastic bag with his fingers swathed in bubble wrap.  In those few seconds, the chill had gotten into him, and it stayed with Sam for the rest of the afternoon, all through his investigation and even now, on his way back to the cabin, the icy river winding silently through the trees at his back. 

Bobby had turned the boys onto this case: a tiny logging town where ice was inexplicably breaking in the dead of winter.  So far two people had gone under: one a little girl on skates, who had been pulled out immediately, and the second a seasoned logger who had been rescued but lost a foot and three fingers to frostbite.  Both times, completely solid ice more than a foot thick had suddenly split, creating a chasm into the deadly cold waters below.  It hadn’t been difficult to discover the cause with a town this small—he was only three back issues into the library’s archive of the local paper when he hit the headline about the tragedy of John Lander, who had fallen through an ice fishing hole in the river and been swept downstream until he got caught on a matt of driftwood and froze to death right there under the ice.

Dean had been right and people had given him a wide berth at the river, probably in no small part because he looked like a backup dancer for Elf the Musical—again, Dean’s pleasant sentiment. That was just as well, though, because it had given Sam a chance to examine the spot where John Lander had gone in, which was now essentially his grave.  John Lander’s body was too deep in the frozen river to be chiseled out, but close enough to the surface for his frozen face and hand to been visible through the opaque white of the ice.  It confirmed Sam’s suspicion that John’s ghost was most likely breaking the ice in an attempt to free itself from the awful death it was trapped in.  The conundrum was to salt and burn a body they couldn’t even reach.

Sam wasn’t sure if his fingers were going numb or if he just couldn’t feel anything because he’d wrapped them in eight layers of polyester, but whichever it was he picked up his pace, stepping out onto the hard ice of the empty backwoods road that led to the cabin.  The wind picked up and bit into his raw cheeks.  Sam ducked his head.  Dean would probably be finished impersonating an Inspector from the Health and Safety Commission by now, and in this weather, it wasn’t likely that anyone else would go out to the river, which meant they could probably take the rest of the night out without worrying about anyone else dying.  The small cabin came into view in the distance, just a smudge of thick brown logs standing out against the snow, and Sam fought down a shiver from the icy snowmelt running down his collar, reminding himself of the thermostat and hot water heater awaiting him inside.  He jogged the last hundred feet with his head down, his eyes tearing up from the cold.

He was almost to the door of their small cabin when he finally looked up, and then screeched to a stop, or tried to—the packed snow offered no traction and Sam floundered like a moose on the ice for a moment, his arms flailing, before finally regaining his feet and staring back into impassive blue eyes.

Castiel stood like a sentinel at the bottom of the steps leading up to the cabin door, hands at his sides and a stony expression on his face.  He was also covered in snow, because for some reason he was standing just beyond the shelter of the overhang, little piles of snow accumulating on the shoulders of his tan trench coat.  The tiny flakes stood out in fierce white against the dark strands of his hair.  Sam pulled his hands back in and shoved his hands down in his pockets, suddenly unsure what to do with himself in his Elf-worthy getup.

“Cas...”  The nickname sent a little flare through him—disbelief, maybe, or confusion at why and angel of the Lord was standing on their steps, doing a pretty good impression of a statue, the only kind of angels Sam had known until a few weeks ago.  Sam was still more than a little in awe of Castiel, his brother’s guardian angel, but it was harder to access when Castiel was slowly disappearing under a pile of drifted flakes.

“Sam,” the angel greeted in his soft, low voice.  He tipped his head as he spoke and a mound of snow slipped comically from his hair to slump on the ground in front of him.  Sam’s heart fluttered again with something much lighter, and he felt a huff of a laugh leaving his lips, becoming a cloud of steam in the frigid air.  He fought down a smile as he moved to the angel’s side.

“What’s going on, Cas?” Sam asked. “You have snow all over you...”  He hesitated for just a second, but another pile of snow slid down to rest in the crook of Castiel’s elbow and Sam made up his mind, lifting his hand.  He felt clumsy in his ridiculously jacket, his puffy, overstuffed gloves making his movements even more haphazard as he tried to dust the snow from Cas’s shoulders and hair.  The angel looked up at him with dark questioning eyes, and Sam hesitated once more, but even though Castiel’s shoulders were rigid under his frozen coat he didn’t step back, and as the snow drifted down around them Sam felt a certain warmth at the closeness.

Castiel glanced over his shoulder toward the cabin, then back at Sam; the hunter had almost forgotten that he had asked the angel a question by the time he spoke.  “I am waiting,” Castiel explained.  Sam blinked at the seeming non sequitur, then stamped his feet against the growing numbness in his toes, shaking his head.

“Waiting...?” Sam repeated slowly. “Why don’t you wait inside?” It was strange to be talking to the angel in the cold like this, dancing from foot to foot.  Cas’s confused face was somehow human and Sam felt strangely comforted.  Castiel offered a thoughtful frowned.

“I have been told to wait outside,” he answered.  Sam shook his head, glancing up at the darkening sky and the tips of pine trees waving in the wind.

“Told?  Told by who…” But before the words had even left his lips, Sam was shaking his head, because it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and come up with the only person rude enough to tell an _angel_ to wait outside in a blizzard.  Sam tried to run a hand through his hair but only ended up swiping a cold line of melting snow across his forehead.  “Oh, god—I mean, uh…jeez.  I can’t believe Dean sent you out here—it’s freezing.”

Castiel tipped his head slightly.  “Cold will not damage me,” he assured Sam. 

“Still...” Sam protested.  “Even for Dean, that’s pretty…” He trailed off as he noticed those sharp blue eyes fixed on his face.  Castiel was studying him thoughtfully, and after a moment the angel took a step forward, lifting his hand.  Part of Sam wanted to flinch away, from the angel and the familiar flutter that ached in his chest.  His cold feet kept in frozen.  A single breath blossomed into white at his lips as Cas’s cold hand brushed snow from his bangs, the white particles floating down between them like their own private snowstorm.

“You are also covered in snow, Sam,” the angel informed him.  Sam breathed in and the cold air cut into his lungs.  The trench coat settled like quivering wings as the angel lowered his hand.  “When I appeared, Dean was very upset.  He threw a towel at me and said I was to wait outside, but perhaps you could go in.”

Sam frowned as he listened, trying to put the scene together, but then a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.  “Cas, was Dean, uh…possibly naked when he said this to you?” he asked.  He was already working his fat glove off and fishing for the key in his pocket.  Castiel’s eyes flickered up as though he were considering.

“Yes,” the angel decided finally.  Sam nodded as though he suspected as much and moved past Cas up the steps, waving him toward the cabin with his quickly numbing bare hand.  The angel still looked unsure. 

“Cas,” Sam started, catching the angel’s gaze, “Dean didn’t mean you had to wait out here in the snow.  He was probably about to take a shower…You know that little room you appeared in?  He meant you had to wait outside of there—the bathroom.” 

Cas was studying him again, and Sam tried to project as much sincerity as he could into his voice, offering a small smile.  The doorknob rattled twice and then finally twisted open under his freezing hand, and Sam could feel the cloud of warmth rise up to meet him.  He gestured Cas in again, and was relieved when the angel complied this time, stepping through the doorway.  Sam closed the door again as fast as he could.  He pulled off his striped hat, shaking his hair out.  Sure enough Sam could faintly hear the sound of the shower from behind the closed bathroom door in the back corner of the small cabin.  The cabin was nicer than most of the motels they stayed in, but smaller, with only twin beds so close together Sam’s knees touched his brother’s bed when he sat down and a mini kitchenette that was practically in the bedroom, only a few small square tiles separating it from the carpeted space.  Sam figured it was supposed to be cozy, with brightly colored afghans on the bedspreads and a ceramic bowl on the counter full of various teas, and a cheery vase of fake flowers in the corner—but especially at his size, he just felt like he was living in a doll house.

The tall hunter wrested the puffin coat off and hung it from a thick peg in the wall.  Dean’s jacket, hat, and socks were scattered over the floor, making wet impressions in the carpet, and Sam wrinkled his nose as he picked them up, feeling their cold dampness in his hands as he hung them beside his things to dry. 

His fingers were started to sting as the warmth of the room brought feeling back.  Sam turned to Cas.  The angel had parked himself a few feet inside the door and hadn’t moved any farther into the cabin.  The snow was gone from his trench coat, leaving only large patches of darker tan where the shoulders and collar were wet.  Sam felt a strange rustle of butterflies in his stomach being alone with Cas, and he bit his lip a moment, staring at the angel.

“I’m gonna put on something dry.” Sam gestured over his shoulder toward his bag, splayed out on the floor like a biology dissection from his earlier attempt to find his warmest clothes.  Castiel looked over as Sam spoke but his expression stayed utterly blank.  Sam wet his lips.  “Do you want something to…?”

“No,” the angel cut him off. “I require nothing.”  Sam’s hand hung in the air for a moment before he let it drop, catching himself and shaking his head.

“Right, no—of course,” he said.  With nothing else forthcoming from his heavenly companion, Sam made his way across the room, a strange rubbery feeling in his chest.  The angel wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, but neither did he look away, and as he pulled on a pair of sweats Sam felt self-conscious in a way he hadn’t since he was a teenager in a boys’ locker room.  Sam wasn’t sure what Cas was waiting for exactly, except for Dean.  Part of him wanted to ask the angel why he was here, if maybe he wanted to talk to Sam, but a cold hand somewhere in his chest squeezed around his heart at the thought, and Sam realized he would rather not know.  Rather not ask and have the angel deny him again.  Sam bit his lip so hard his skin turned white.

He could feel Castiel’s dark eyes on him as he moved to the kitchenette, filling the cheery red teakettle and then flicking the stove on.  The tall hunter leaned back against the counter, fighting his jumpy stomach.  Dean’s angel was waiting for him, but he was here with Sam for just this moment.

“Do you know what a snow angel is, Cas?” Sam asked suddenly, without thinking about it.  He could tell he had surprised Castiel by the slight widening of his eyes.  The angel shook his head slowly.

“I am not familiar with this creature,” he admitted.  Sam felt a little smile tugged at his chapped lips.

“It’s not a creature.  It’s a kids’ game that you play in the snow.” Cas continued to stare at Sam, and the tall hunter wiped his hands nervously on his jeans.  “You lie down in the snow and move your arms and legs…”

Sam waved his hands to demonstrate.  Castiel’s completely straight face almost made Sam want to quit there, but not if it meant going back to that silence.

“Um, anyway, it leaves an impression in the snow that looks like an angel.” Cas’s expression shifted from blank to skeptical, and Sam hurried on.  “I mean, not a real angel, I guess, but…”  He trailed off, wishing he could just bash himself skull with the teapot and be done with it.  “I guess not an angel at all,” he finished. “Just some imprints in the snow.”

Castiel didn’t say anything, but his gaze remained fixed on Sam, and the silence felt so thick it stuck in the hunter’s throat.  He was saved the awkwardness of having to try and salvage the mess he’d made by the whistling of the teapot, and as Sam turned to click off the stove he wondered if his brother wasn’t right, and if he shouldn’t just go ahead and pave his mouth if he was going to walk around in there so much.

Sam opened the cabinet, staring at the mugs that came with their furnished cabin.  His fingers were still chilled, so cold the bones inside felt like they were made of ice, and he stared at them, pressed against the yellow countertop, before glancing at Cas standing stock-still in the entryway.  He pulled down two mugs.

He could feel the angel’s eyes on his back as he set the cups down with a soft click, retrieving the kettle and pulling the dish of tea packets closer.  The steam curled up into the air and Sam took a deep breath, his nostrils filled with the scent of lemon a moment later as he dunked a tea bag into each mug, watching the water swirl with color.  Sam tugged the strings of the teabags lightly, gathering his nerve.  Before he could lose it again, he took one cup in each hand and walked over to the angel, holding one out.  Castiel narrowed his eyes at the burst of flowers decorating the ceramic.  Somewhere in the background, the water finally turned off in the bathroom.

“I know you don’t need food or anything,” Sam said before the angel could open his mouth. “And you don’t have to drink it.  It’s just…when it’s cold outside, it’s sort of a human thing to hold a hot mug.” Sam closed his eyes briefly, taking a deep breath of the lemon-scented steam that was finally warming him from the inside.  Castiel stared at him, and for one moment Sam thought he would refuse even this, but then his hand came up slowly, uncertainly, and he took the second mug.  Sam smiled at Cas over the top of his mug, lifting it as though in cheers or salute, he wasn’t sure.

Castiel stared at the mug in his hands for a long moment before bringing it up in an echo of Sam’s gesture and breathing in the steam.  His expression didn’t change, and Sam wasn’t sure if it meant anything to the angel at all, but as he listened to Dean bustling around the bathroom, muttering about _angels so far up his ass he could taste feathers in the back of his throat_ , Sam was just glad that Cas taken it at all.  It felt like something, at least a first step.  Sam took another drink of tea and felt the last of the cold seeping out of him, chased away by a sense of warmth pulsing deep within his chest.  He wondered if it had anything to do with the tea, after all.


	2. Warmth II

Castiel had no experience being a guardian angel. He had been a soldier for a very long time, and before that, before the first and only and eternal war, he had simply existed, an observer walking the edges of a newborn world. The Winchesters were not his first assignment, but they were the first he’d ever been given that required extensive contact with humans, and he was not sure yet how often it was prudent to descend and check them over; so much could happen in a matter of seconds, so little in the course of centuries. He had witnessed both. For the time being, he was trying out a check-in every two days—the Winchesters lived dangerous lives, but they were, after all, still human. Humans moved slowly, on a universal scale.

The Winchesters were back in their small cabin, the latest in a string of temporary residences, where they were staying during the investigation of a disturbed spirit. Dean had been unreceptive—hostile, even—when Castiel appeared to him two days earlier, so the angel let his sense of Sam guide him, folding his wings as he landed behind the younger hunter on a floor of cracked tile. A brief glance around showed he was in the same small room where he’d appeared last time, the space cramped by an old porcelain sink and a bar of damp towels protruding from the back of the door. Castiel decided this must be a room where humans spent a great deal of their time, in spite of its small size.

Remembering Dean’s adverse reaction to his presence and Sam’s explanation of the same, the angel carefully took stock of Sam’s appearance: he was dressed in a black pullover and thin red shorts with white stripes, and was standing with one foot in the bathtub, hissing every so often as the water ran over his toes. But importantly, he was not naked. Castiel allowed his physical form to flicker into existence.

“Hello, Sam.”

Sam jumped and gave an aborted shout, trying to pivot from the bathtub to turn and face the rest of the room. The bathtub was wet, however, and the young man slid, only managing to stop himself when he shoulders slammed against the corner walls behind the tub. The considerable bang of Sam’s large hands slapping the tiles echoed in the small room, and Castiel heard, beyond the white door covered in towels, the screech of a chair being pushed back, Dean’s heavy footfalls pounding in their direction as Sam stared at him with wide eyes and Castiel stared back, unmoving.

“Sammy? You okay in there?”

Sam seemed to shake himself, water sloshing out of the tub as he pushed away from the wall and stepped out onto the floor next to Castiel. “I’m fine, Dean,” the younger hunter yelled back, his hands fidgeting above his stomach. “It’s just… Cas kind of…” Sam trailed off, blinking, and then yanked one of the towels down and wrapped it around his waist, covering the red shorts. Castiel wondered if that article of clothing was inappropriate somehow. Humans had such complex rules about nakedness.

“Cas?” Dean’s voice flared up beyond the door again; Castiel thought he sounded annoyed. “Is Cas in the bathroom again?”

Sam gave Castiel a strange little half-smile, his eyes too wide for the expression to be casual. “Uh… that’s an affirmative.”

The door rattled as Dean’s fist collided with the other side, shaking the folds of multicolored towels. “Damn it, Cas! Get out of there. What did I tell you last time?”

Dean had told him to wait outside. But Sam had amended that, allowed him back inside the cabin and given him a cup of warm tea to hold. The angel glanced at the younger hunter now, searching for direction; Sam had one hand pressed over his heart, which was beating rapidly, and he winced as he met Castiel’s eyes, his right foot dripping relentlessly onto the ragged bathmat.

“Um… maybe we can talk after I take a shower?” Sam suggested, his voice trailing up at the end. The young man bit his lip. “I mean, if you came to talk to me. Otherwise, Dean’s…” He gestured vaguely to the bathroom door, then returned to gripping the towel around his waist, the edges pulled as tight as his large frame allowed. “Yeah,” Sam finished after a moment. “Just give me, like, five minutes. I’ll be fast.”

Castiel had not come to talk to anyone in particular. His only goal was to check on the Winchesters and gain a few basic pieces of information from them—what they were doing, what they had been doing, where they were headed next. A small flare of grace in Sam’s direction was enough to assure him that the younger Winchester was uninjured, as was Dean beyond the door, though their body temperatures were lower than normal. Castiel considered departing for the moment and returning to complete the rest of his business at another time—but if Sam wished to talk to him, there was no reason he couldn’t wait, and with a short rustle of wings he appeared in the other room, staring at the back of Dean’s head as he banged on the bathroom door.

“Cas, I’m gonna give you five seconds to get your feathered ass out of there, and then angel or no angel I’m gonna give you swirlies until your hair is stuck that way—”

“Dean,” Castiel broke in.

Castiel wasn’t sure what about him caught the Winchesters so off guard so much of the time—but whatever it was, Dean was susceptible to it as well. The older hunter’s shoulders leapt up to his ears and he slapped the door open-handed, sending a hollow crack throughout the snugly furnished room. “Son of a biscuitmaker!” Dean shouted, his head snapping back as he rounded on Castiel. Then the hunter wrinkled his nose, which was only an inch or two from the angel’s own. “Cas, I swear to God—between your personal space issues and showing up in people’s bathrooms, you are a grade-A creeper.”

Castiel felt his eyes narrow slightly. It seemed like a strange vow to address to God—but perhaps that was because he didn’t know what a creeper was. It was a situation he was becoming accustomed to very quickly, as Dean Winchester had a penchant for meaningless noise.

From the room beyond them came the rush of water hitting the porcelain bathtub, and then a shift in pitch as something stepped in front of the spray—Sam, presumably. Dean glanced briefly at the closed bathroom door and then back to Castiel, and he scrubbed his fingers through his hair, bothering the strands damp with snowmelt until they stuck out at all angles.

“Okay,” the hunter decided, taking a deep breath. Then he leveled his index finger at the angel, pointing between Castiel and the foot of one of the beds—Sam’s, Castiel decided, since it had been made up. “I am gonna do this once, and then never again, you hear me? Pop a squat.” Castiel squinted at him, and Dean rolled his eyes again, pushing against the angel’s shoulder with the heel of his hand. “Sit, would ya?”

Castiel complied slowly—the bed wasn’t far, but it took him longer to decide how to bend, not having much experience with sitting or any other actions that required corporeal form. Dean slumped down on the other bed and braced his elbows on his knees. Castiel copied his pose just to have something to do with his arms, rather than leaving them hanging over the edge of the mattress. Dean smoothed a hand across his forehead.

“Can’t believe I’m doing this,” he grumbled, glaring back at the bathroom door. “I am leaving the rest of this crap to Sam.” Then he straightened and locked gazes with Castiel, digging his fingers into his loose pants. “Okay. Here it is. Bathroom? Off limits.” Castiel felt his eyebrows draw together, but before he could inquire Dean jerked a thumb over his shoulder, wiggling it at the white door and the whistle of water in the pipes. “That little room everywhere we stay that has the shower and the john—just don’t show up in there. That’s solo time. Anybody who goes in there wants to be alone, so when you come in for a landing, land somewhere else.”

Castiel studied Dean’s shifting expression, all the little tics that showcased the progression of human emotion, and then glanced toward the door in question. “Sam was not unclothed,” the angel ventured, in case that was the concern.

Dean dug his fingertips into his temples and rubbed hard. “Thanks for making this as awkward as possible, Cas,” he shot back. The sound of the water tapered off, and in the new silence Dean lifted his chin and met Castiel’s gaze, leaning forward over the edge of the bed. “Look, here’s the bottom line: I don’t care who’s in there, and I don’t care if they’re buck naked or wearing a fucking Barney suit. The bathroom is an angel no-fly zone, and you are not going in there again. Is that clear?”

Castiel squinted at him, still feeling somewhat vague on the reasons behind Dean’s ultimatum. But the hunter’s words had been understandable for once—the important ones, at least—so in the end the angel just nodded, blue eyes locked on Dean’s exasperated green.

“I will not go in there,” he repeated.

Dean slapped his knees and stood up from the bed. “Great. Because I am dead serious, Cas—you’re an okay guy for a complete and utter tool, but if you ever do it again, I’m going to kill you.”

Castiel considered explaining to Dean how impossible that would be for him, as he pondered why it was that humans so often followed their threats with a sentence of execution, as if it were the only punishment a listener might give due concern—but before he spoke, the door to the bathroom cracked open and Sam stepped out fully dressed, surrounded by a cloud of escaping steam, a towel slung over his shoulder. Sam paused in the doorway and raked a hand back through his hair, pushing wet tendrils away from his face. “Hey, Dean—shower’s open.”

“Thank God,” Dean muttered, sounding more sincere than he usually did when he turned to blasphemy. He stepped out from between the two mattresses and slapped his brother on the shoulder, jerking his head at Castiel. “Tag, Sammy—you can deal with the rest of this. By the way, I’m not coming out until the hot water is gone.” Then he swept a bundle of clothes into his arms and moved into the bathroom, pushing the door most of the way closed but not bothering to latch it. Sam rolled his eyes.

“Dean, shut the door, would you? No one wants to hear you—” He was cut off by the roar of the shower, the sound of its spatter much clearer than before; Sam sighed and then seemed to give up, turning his attention to Castiel instead and sending the angel a brief smile. “Hey, Cas. Sorry about… you know, before.” Sam rubbed his damp towel over his head and then let it fall to his shoulders as he dug his fingers into his hair again, little drops of water raining down onto the sleeves of his extra-long t-shirt. “But I’m… out, now, so… what do you need?”

“I do not need anything, Sam,” Castiel said. The angel tipped his head slightly, attempting to recall the words Dean had used during one of his earlier visits. “I came only to check you out.”

Sam cringed a little, his shoulders drawing in as he pressed his lips together—his reaction was overpowered by the cackle of laughter cascading from the bathroom door, amplified by the acoustics of the miniscule space. Sam pulled the towel from his neck and whipped it at the door, but the slap as it hit the painted wood just made Dean laugh harder. Sam turned back to Castiel with one hand tangled in his hair.

“It’s check up, Cas—you came to check up on us. Check out is sort of… different.”

Castiel accepted that and committed the phraseology to memory, and after a moment of silence from him Sam took a seat in the same padded chair he’d chosen two days before, clasping and unclasping his hands in front of him.

“Yeah, so…” The young man trailed off, waving one hand over his shoulder in a gesture that seemed to encompass the shower, Dean, and the back wall of the cabin. “We’re good. Fine. We just… finished up the John Lander case. Went pretty well.”

“The hell it did!” Dean shouted from the bathroom, his voice cascading out into the rest of the cabin along with billows of steam. There was a thump from behind the wall, as if something had hit the inside of the door and then slid to the floor—Castiel wondered if the older hunter had thrown a towel of his own. “I told you it was a shit plan from the very beginning, Sammy. We’re lucky the damn thing didn’t go worse.” 

Castiel’s eyes flitted from the off-limits doorway back to Sam, assessing the expression that had pinched the young man’s face. “There were complications?” he asked.

Sam lifted one leg into his lap and began unconsciously rubbing the bridge of his right foot, working his fingers into the space between his toes. “Yeah, I mean—nothing big. We just… to get the ghost out from under the ice, we had to sort of perform a summoning on top of the frozen river and then lead it to a… massive crack in the surface with below-freezing water underneath.” Sam gave a half smile and shrugged, the black pullover rising with the motion to brush the tips of his still-wet hair. “Anyway, Dean’s hand went in and my foot, and… I lost a shoe.”

“Yeah, I’m still pissed about that,” Dean shouted from the shower. Sam glanced behind him and then at Castiel, and then suddenly the younger hunter was moving, making for the bathroom door as Dean’s voice filled the cabin. “It’s hard enough to find clothes in your size, Sam, but it is impossible to find you shoes. Swear to God, the next pair you lose, I’m gonna buy you a pair of clown shoes and you can wear those until—” The remainder of Dean’s rant disappeared abruptly as Sam yanked the bathroom door shut.

Sam sighed and gave the doorknob a final jerk, then turned back to the room and brushed his hands together as though wiping something clean. Sam’s expression shifted in the spaces between seconds from annoyance into satisfaction; Castiel watched him and wondered what it was about human emotion that made it so very changeable. Then Sam turned back to him and his expression slipped into something that Castiel had not yet learned to identify, the particular shadow of feeling that fell across Sam’s face whenever his eyes met the angel’s—uncertainty, perhaps, or eagerness. An emotion that inherently held something back. Sam crossed his feet at the ankles, and Castiel noticed for the first time that he was wearing two different socks, one dark green and the other blue-and-black striped—and the angel couldn’t help thinking what a strange and unfathomable thing that was: humanity inventing differently colored socks. Then shrill singing started up from beyond the bathroom door, and Sam rolled his eyes, a little of the aggravation stealing back onto his face.

“Sorry about him,” he said, with a fluency that made Castiel wonder if Sam said those particular words quite often. The young man shook his head. “Anyway, that was pretty much it. We got the spirit out—probably,” Sam amended, one hand fluttering up in a passing gesture. “I mean, we can’t know for sure until the corpse thaws out in the spring, but… and we got back fast enough that nobody’s going to get frostbite. So over all…”

Sam trailed off, ducking his chin toward his chest, and for a moment the only sound in the cabin was Dean’s singing, the wrong key to accompany the whistling of the pipes. Castiel considered the mismatched socks on Sam’s feet, the toes of his right foot tucked under his left as if burrowing away from the January chill. He thought about the river choked with ice, the splash of a body in dead winter water. Then he rose from the edge of the bed, his trench coat falling soundlessly to sway at his knees. Sam looked up to meet his gaze.

“You were cold,” Castiel said, returning the young man’s stare. He could feel it thrumming deep within Sam even now, far beneath the skin warmed by a hot shower—a shiver in his bones, the memory of cold as sharp as broken glass.

Sam tucked his hands into his pockets. “Yeah—definitely. It was just one foot, but still… I thought I was going to freeze over.”

Castiel shifted his feet and felt the soft leather of his shoes shift with him. “Are you going to make tea?” he asked. Sam blinked and Castiel’s eyes strayed for a second to the bright red teapot, waiting silently on the cool stove. “Because that is what humans do, when it is cold outside.”

Sam’s eyes widened slightly, and then he was nodding, harder and with greater commitment than he usually did. “Right,” Sam agreed, pulling his hands from his pockets and wiping them against his sweatpants. “Because—the steam. Yeah. Um… sure. We could make tea.”

It was colder in the kitchen, in the draft from the imperfectly sealed window. Sam filled the red teapot and then shoved his hands back in his pockets while he waited for the water to boil, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. Castiel watched him shiver and thought about the Winchesters, about Sam, plunging into a frozen river beneath a flow of ice. Then Sam turned back to him with a second mug of tea in hand, vapors of lemon steam curling up from the mouth of the cup and a small smile on his lips, and Castiel reached for it without hesitation—because here was warmth, deep in the snow, and warmth was not something to be wasted.


	3. S'mores

The Winchesters were unusual for an assignment from Heaven. Of the humans guardian angels were dispensed to watch over, most were children, some were martyrs; the Winchesters, of course, were neither, and Castiel was not a guardian angel, either. There had been times when Castiel wondered at the wisdom of his posting, and what greater plans he and the Winchesters were intended to bring to fruition; but the ways of the Father were mysterious, and Castiel knew enough not to question the will of Heaven—at least not publicly.

Still, Castiel had always been thorough and efficient in completing his holy assignments; he wasn’t proud of that, because pride was a cardinal sin, but it was a basic fact of his nature. It was why, even though Dean had assured him at his last visit that he and Sam were headed to a safe place and wouldn’t need an angelic chaperone for the next few days, Castiel was descending nonetheless to check on them. They were a duty, after all, and the angel was not certain Dean Winchester was as in control of their safety and himself as he seemed to think. The memory of flames was too clear in his green eyes for Castiel to trust him completely.

He appeared on the first floor of a two-story house, next to a battered desk overflowing with stacks of books. A small flare of grace was enough to tell him that this was the house of Robert Singer, the man who had been present when he’d first shown himself to Dean; the older hunter’s essence was in everything, from the disordered piles of ruffled papers to the devil’s traps circles painted on the ceiling above him.

Dean seemed to be somewhere on the second floor. Castiel could hear his feet pounding on the worn boards over his head, the sound creasing back and forth as he moved with his usual careless haste. Sam was closer, just in the next room, so Castiel headed for him instead, picking his way around two wooden chairs with broken posts in their backs and stepping through the doorway with a last glance at the sealing circle overhead. At least there was some measure of safety for the Winchesters here.

His first impression of the room was that of great warmth. This room was crowded as well, books and the tools of the older hunter’s trade scattered across two tables and a weathered couch, and along the far wall a hearth and blazing fire, the dry logs cracking as they split within the twisting flames. For a moment Castiel’s mind strayed to the flames that lingered in Dean’s eyes, and his own memories of the descent through clouds of black smoke, the writhing of souls tortured on the pyre—but man used fire for other things, and Castiel dismissed his thoughts, focusing instead on the figure in front of the blaze. Sam lay on his back on the grooved hardwood floor with his arms under his head and his eyes closed; his shoes toppled over each other in a pile near the couch, and he had his feet up on the stone of the hearth, his toes twitching as they soaked in the heat of the fire through thick green socks. Castiel noted they were the same color today.

A warped board creaked under Castiel’s steps and Sam shifted, breathing in through his nose and stretching one arm out across the floor behind him. “Hey, will you throw me that pillow?” the young man asked, his voice fuzzy with sleep.

Castiel tipped his head, considering. Then he turned his gaze to the couch and evaluated the three pillows smashed into one of its corners, two of them long and fringed and the last flat and rectangular, enfolded in a blue pillowcase. Castiel turned back to Sam.

“Which pillow?” he asked.

Sam’s return to awareness was slow. His eyes opened, but could not seem to stay that way; he leaned his head back until he could see Castiel instead of the ceiling, and in the process one of his legs pulled up into a bend, bracing against the stone hearth to support the position of his neck. For a long moment he moved no farther, struggling to comprehend his awakening, and Castiel studied him that way—his lanky form crooked on the floor with one foot drawn hesitantly up, the other still outstretched to the flames, the tangle of his hair fanning out across the boards, hazel eyes blinking at him upside down, each motion of his eyelids heavy with drowsiness. Then Sam’s mind seemed to catch up to him, and he lurched over onto his stomach, one arm trapped under him as he peered up at Castiel with surprise clear on his features.

“Cas,” Sam managed, clearing his throat against his dry voice. The young man lifted his free hand and brushed his hair back from his face, trapping it against the top of his head. “Sorry. I thought you were Dean. Um…” The hunter trailed off and closed his eyes for a long moment, the tendrils of sleep and warmth threatening to drag him back under. In the end Sam fought them away, forcing his eyes open again. “Dean said you wouldn’t be stopping by for a few days, while we were here at Bobby’s.”

Castiel let his gaze drift along the mantel, crowded with horns and feathers and a hundred other trinkets, before his eyes dropped back to Sam. “That is not your brother’s decision,” he said.

Sam shook his head hard, ratcheting himself up into a sitting position. “No, of course—I didn’t mean—”

“Sammy! We’re good to go!”

Whatever Sam might have meant was interrupted by Dean’s voice and the sound of his feet thundering down the stairs. Castiel and Sam both turned to the doorway, in which the elder Winchester appeared several seconds later, his hands bursting with colorful boxes and plastic bags.

“I found Bobby’s chocolate stash, so we’ve got—” Dean came to a halt as his eyes landed on Castiel, and a sharp frown twisted his mouth, reminding Castiel for one instant of the creature he had hauled from the flames. “Oh, great,” Dean continued, with much less enthusiasm. “It’s the angelic third degree. I thought I gave you the week off, Cas.”

Sam shifted in front of the fire, and Castiel narrowed his eyes, distracted for a moment from the older Winchester’s scowl by a smiling white cylinder on the bag labeled Jet-Puffed. “This is my job, Dean,” he said, his gaze wandering back to Dean’s face from the cartoon advertisement. “You are my responsibility. That doesn’t happen on your terms.”

Dean jerked his head back and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, I get it. Just another sucker punching a time clock, huh?” Castiel tipped his head, and Dean rolled his eyes, apparently dismissing his confusion. “Well—we’re alive, we’re fine, and we’re about to make s’mores before Bobby comes back from his tow job and chews us up for rearranging his living room. So unless you want to hold the graham crackers, why don’t you punch out and flap off already?”

“Dean,” Sam said, snapping his head to one side. Castiel glanced at the box Dean was holding out to him, blue with pictures of golden wafers sparkling with sugar, and then between the Winchesters once more, his eyes hesitating on Sam’s expression.

“I did not give Sam a pillow,” he said.

Sam’s face seemed to take on a reddish hue, his mouth just open as if there were words on the tip of his tongue—but Dean beat him to it, taking a step forward and shoving the blue box into Castiel’s hands as he shook his head. “Cas, if you are not the weirdest motherfucker ever to walk the earth, then you are definitely runner-up.” Then the older hunter shrugged and moved to the fireplace, where he kicked a crumple of newspaper into the flames and dumped the rest of his bags into Sam’s lap. “Whatever. Stay if you want, but you’re not getting any s’mores.”

Sam sent his brother a small frown; it seemed to help him regain composure, because when he turned back to Castiel, the flush had disappeared from his cheeks. “You don’t really have to hold the graham crackers, Cas,” he said, pulling his head back as if nodding toward the hearth. “Do you want to come stand by the fire? It’s a lot warmer over here.”

Castiel had no need of warmth. The love of the Father was what sustained him, had always sustained him; and unlike the fires of man, Heaven’s was a cold light. But all the same Castiel crossed the room to stand behind Sam, listening to the crinkle of tearing wrappers as Dean dug into his packages—and though he had no reason to stay, he stayed nonetheless for a quarter of an hour, and pondered what strange, vigorous creatures humans were as he watched the Winchesters roasting puffs of white on little sticks and scattering golden crumbs all over the stone hearth. He watched Sam easing the sticky mess from the end of his stick and onto a square of chocolate and pondered all of the meaningless things that made humans laugh.

When he stepped back to depart, Sam looked up at him and gave a small nod, and then a smaller smile. “Thanks for stopping in, Cas,” he said, earning a roll of his brother’s eyes.

“Don’t encourage him, Sam.”

Castiel did not say anything more to either of the Winchesters. His wings were already opening at his back, and the physicality of his existence flickering out. Nonetheless, Castiel spared one glance over his shoulder at the cluttered living room, bathed in the flickering light of the fire, and remembered the warmth of a cup of tea in his hands—and decided that whether or not it was wholly safe, for there were so many monsters that could walk through a devil’s trap, the Winchesters had at least found someplace warm, and he was satisfied with that for now.


	4. Road I

Dean tapped his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel as he drove.  Water droplets clung to the window from the mist that hung in the air, and though the clouds were heavy in the sky, no rain had fallen for days.  Sam shot a glance at his brother’s tight expression before leaning his head against the cool glass of the window.  They were headed away from Bobby’s place, not for any case in particular, just to be back out on the road.  Truth be told, Sam wasn’t ready to leave yet, but his brother had been jittery since the moment he woke up, and the tall hunter was finding it hard to deny his brother anything these days.

It had been good to be at Bobby’s familiar place, to have the older hunter grumping at them and filling them with homemade chili and soup.  Some part of Sam had always felt at home at Bobby’s place, more than anywhere else, and for the first time muscles that had been tensed since he’d lost Dean all those months ago had relaxed, and he had held onto the tiniest hope that maybe his brother would feel the same way and they could just be home for awhile.  But it was not the auto yard or even the old hunter that Dean always drifted back to in the end—it was the Impala, the car that had carried them through their childhood, that had whisked them away from the fire that burned their house—the car that had belonged to John Winchester.

Sam thought that maybe Dean had had a nightmare. He couldn’t be sure; he had been locked in his own dark dreams at the time, filled with alcohol and demons and a phone ringing that he knew was Bobby but couldn’t fight his way over to answer.  The sound of the shower coming on had been a relief, and he had wiped his brow and headed down to make coffee for his brother and the gruff older hunter. He’d perched on the counter, waiting for the relief the grizzled form of Bobby coming around the corner brought—the half-grumbled good morning, half-complaints about the ungodly earliness, and the rough fingers gentle on his arm.  He should never have run from Bobby all those months ago, after Dean...and being here was soothing something inside of him.

But then there had been the shadow on Dean’s face, and as casual as his words were when he suggested they take off, Sam had been able to see through to the steel underneath.  Dean was already gone, somewhere out on the road, and even though Sam’s heart ached for the familiarity of the house, he knew that Dean’s need was greater.

His brother hadn’t said anything at first, just begged Sam to let them be together, _like before_.  And that had been Sam’s prayer, too, at the bottom of every bottle, at the back of every alley, the dead end at every crossroads.  And for a while that was fine, but Sam had known that Hell would catch up to his brother eventually, and Dean needed to hunt.           

So he had smiled, not turning around, as they rolled out of the drive, to watch Bobby’s house fade into the fog.  And though Dean was still tense, some of the lines had faded from around his eyes, and as they hit the open stretch of road he dug around for a tape, cranking the music, his head nodding erratically to the beat.  He arched an eyebrow at Sam when the younger hunter reached out, turning the knob to a setting that wouldn’t blow out their eardrums and thrum through the entire car.

“Dude, I still want to have my hearing in my old age,” Sam quipped, knowing the routine even if his heart wasn’t completely in it.

“Such a princess,” Dean responded with a smile that made even more of the harshness melt away, and though he reached forward to fiddle the volume higher, it was nowhere near the earsplitting crash from before.  Dean snuck a look at him, and as Sam made a mock disgusted sound in the back of his throat, he suddenly understood that his brother needed this.  This was a role only Sam could play.

And though he had meant to talk to Dean about what happened while he was gone, try and find some common ground between them, he felt himself instead just pushing away the memories, because in the end it was just one more dark chapter in his life to be buried like all the rest.  One more time he had been drowning and made a mistake. But Dean was back, and that had to be all that was important.  His smile widened as Dean started to sing along, missing a particularly piercing high note that brought forth images of cartoon characters shattering glass with bad opera.

“Dean—” he started, and then suddenly there was a loud bang, like a gunshot, and the music skipped violently as the car slid toward the shoulder of the road.  Sam’s head smacked against the window, while his chest jerked against the suddenly too tight seatbelt.  The wind was knocked out of him briefly, and his thoughts scattered in all directions as he watched Dean fighting the steering wheel, hunched over with his foot slamming down on the brake.

The whole thing only took a few seconds, and Sam hadn’t even managed to properly gather his thoughts before Dean was swearing.

“Still in one piece, Sam?” he asked, looking over.

The tall hunter had managed to push himself off of the dashboard, and he nodded shakily to his brother, struggling to unbuckle the seatbelt that still had him pinned in place.

“Great...just great!” Dean was no longer talking to him as he threw his hands up, slamming the door outward with more force than necessary.  Sam did the same, his mind catching up to the events as he watched his brother crouch down next to the tire that had blown right under the driver’s seat.  It wasn’t just a puncture, either, and as Sam looked back he saw bits of black rubber along the dark skid marks in the road.  At least Dean had managed to stop the car in the dirt of the shoulder, just part of the front end tilted down into the tall grasses by the side of the road.  There seemed to be some damage to the rim as well. 

Sam jogged back over his side of the car where he had left the door open and snatched his phone from where it had fallen to the floor.  The tall hunter lifted himself back up, meeting Dean’s eyes over the roof over the car as his brother straightened.  He waved the phone a little.

“Look, we’re only a few hours from Bobby’s, all right?” He smiled hopefully. “I’ll just call him and he can bring the tow truck.” 

“No.”

Sam had already punched in two numbers before his brother’s answer really hit him. “What?” He let his fingers fall away, resting both hands on the still-warm surface of the Impala.  “You don’t want me to call Bobby?” Sam frowned; he knew they didn’t have a spare currently, and he couldn’t quite read his brother’s expression.

“No,” Dean repeated, and this time when he looked up Sam could see the anger in his eyes.  “We’re not going to be stopped by some shitty tire!” His brother’s gaze traveled to the road, maybe looking for the reason this had happened, and after a moment he walked back over, staring at the damage to the car again.  Sam wasn’t sure exactly what his brother wanted to do—it seemed silly to call some other tow service.  He cleared his throat uncertainly.

“Dean...” he began softly. The other hunter exploded.

"Goddamn it!  Not now!” And Sam wasn’t sure if Dean was yelling at him, or the car, or just the open road.  He swore again, and this time he added a vicious kick to the steel rim with the bits of tire still hanging off of it.  Then he turned suddenly, lifting his hands to the sky.

“Cas!” his brother yelled. “Cas, you are needed right now.  I’m calling for you, you fucking dilly-dallier—right now!”

It was more a scream than usual, and Sam winced, squeezing the phone in his hand.  Dean took a shuddering breath, no doubt revving up for another round, and Sam moved forward around the car, intending to grab his brother’s arm.  He was still a few steps away when the angel suddenly appeared in the center of the empty road, framed by miles and miles of nothing in either direction.

“I am here, Dean,” Castiel said, but something electric still tingled in the air, and Sam couldn’t help but wonder if it was the angel’s annoyance.  He wasn’t sure how things with Dean had deteriorated so fast, but he could see the tension in his brother’s neck. 

“Took you long enough,” the hunter growled.  It didn’t seem to matter how quickly the angel came—it was never quick enough for Dean.  Castiel continued to stare, expression serious.  His trench coat flapped a little in the breeze, and that same hum in the air made the hair on Sam’s arms stand on end.

“What do you need?” the angel asked calmly.

“What, are you blind?” Dean demanded, gesturing with sharp movements toward the car. “She fucking popped a tire, Cas. We need some of that angel mojo.  So do your thing—wrinkle your nose, or cross your arms and blink—whatever. Just fix her.”

Sam felt a slight crackle as Castiel frowned, looking beyond Dean to the car. “It is not my job to fix your broken things,” the angel said after a moment.  His dark eyes flickered briefly to Sam for the first time, and the tall hunter tried to shake his head, convey how sorry he was, and that something was wrong.

“Not your job?” Dean’s voice had hit that certain pitch that made everything he said sound condescending and cruel.  “Because I thought you were supposed to be my guardian or some shit—not just a dick who leaves people stranded in the middle of nowhere...” 

Castiel stepped forward purposefully, suddenly, as Dean spoke, a dark expression crossing his face, and for one horrible moment Sam thought that he would harm the hunter yelling at him in the road. Worry for his brother gave him the courage to step forward.

“Cas...” he begged, wrapping a hand around Dean’s elbow.  His brother was still mouthing off, asking if Cas wanted a piece of him—and then the angel was right in front of them, lifting both his hands in one fluid movement.  There was the lightest pressure on Sam’s temple, and then the world was shifting around him in a whoosh and he was blinking spots out of his eyes, though he couldn’t remember anything bright.

The room that had materialized around them was familiar, with the shelves of books and the beatup couch and the fireplace that had been cleared just days before.  Bobby’s house—Cas had brought them back to Bobby’s house.

“You never, _never_ do that without my permission,” Dean was hissing at the angel, and as he backed away he wrenched his arm from Sam’s light grip.  Castiel seemed to be considering those words, and the crackle was gone from the air, or maybe just suppressed by the all the other feelings of the familiar house, and Sam finally found his voice amongst the smell of old books and herbs that he would recognize in his sleep.

“Look—at least now we’re not stuck out there, Dean. And now we can borrow Bobby’s tow truck,” Sam said, meeting his brother’s eyes and trying to send him a small smile. “Maybe it won’t be so bad...”

Dean’s lip curled, his whole face morphing into a disgusted expression that made everything disappear—the room, the overflowing coffee table, the mug forgotten in the corner, even the dark-eyed angel whose gaze had always pierced through everything.

“What would you know?” Dean said coldly, turning away. The expression lingered somehow even as his brother walked out, slamming the door and calling for Bobby, and Sam felt like there was a hole inside him somewhere, a drain endlessly emptying from the inside—because it always came back to his mistakes in the end.  He looked away from the door, liquid building behind his eyes, and found his gaze locked with the angel’s.  Castiel stood straight, gaze unwavering as always, and Sam’s face screwed into a crooked smile.

“I’m sorry about Dean,” he apologized. Strangling tendrils still lingered in his chest, making it harder to speak. “About his ordering you around like that.”

Castiel turned to face the tall hunter fully, and his expression lost that sharp edge.  Sam stared into those eyes that sometimes looked so old, like now, and a flutter that felt almost like wings thrummed through his chest.  Then the angel spoke.

“I am not here to answer petty demands.”

It was like being plunged into icy water, the kind, gentle eyes in front of him again and the calm declaration—and even though Sam had not called for Cas, _ever_ , he suddenly felt he should have done something different, stopped Dean.  He was back in the hotel room with Castiel’s hands around his again, the angel looking at him with that expression, like he knew everything.  And Sam swallowed hard, realizing that he probably did, because like any mortal he was bare before the angels.  There were no secrets, no dark part of him that hadn’t been dragged into the light and shone for what it really was. 

Sometimes it felt like everything was about the worst moment of his life, since he was child, every second revolving around a night he didn’t even remember.  And Sam was so much more than that one night.

Castiel’s eyes darted away, growing distant, like he was listening to something else, and Sam knew that in a moment he was going to depart.  And suddenly he was struck by the desire to tell the angel something that he didn’t already know, something not out of the dark, forbidden chapters of his life that would follow him forever.  Something that no one knew—not even Dean.

“I used to play memory a lot—while I was at Stanford.” It was an achingly sweet memory, and Sam’s eyes felt wet for an entirely different reason.  “With Jess.”

Castiel’s head tipped back toward him as he spoke, and when there was only the same dark expression Sam knew that the angel at least knew who Jess was—but he didn’t really, because she wasn’t just a tragic footnote in the war between the angels and demons.

“Before we were even together..,” Sam went on. He wasn’t even really looking at the angel, lost instead in a memory. “We were in a lot of the same classes, and we studied together.  And there was so much studying, Cas.” A smile played at the corner of Sam’s mouth.  “And we were so desperate and tired that one night we turned our flashcards upside down all over the floor, and we played the most impossible game of memory, trying to match court cases and law precedent.  And Jess was sitting on Roe v. Wade, and the case about unlawful search and seizure was all the way over in the laundry basket, and we never could find McCulloch v. Maryland again after that night...”  Sam blinked, suddenly finding himself focusing back on the figure in the trench coat.  “Anyway, it was our thing.”

Castiel’s eyes rested on his, and Sam breathed in a little shakily, blinking until he was sure all the wetness was gone.  It was a different expression on the angel’s face now, and though he couldn’t read it, it calmed the shaking in his chest.  Enough to nod into the stretching silence.

“I’ll make sure to pass your message on to Dean.”

Castiel’s mouth twitched like he was about to say something, but then his eyes darted upward again, deep creases filling his forehead this time. “I must depart,” he said, and the hunter felt himself nodding again, too quickly, his tongue running over his cheek.

Sam continued to stare at the empty space the angel where had stood for a long moment, before he was snapped out of his reverie by Dean’s loud voice shouting his name.  Sam shook himself slowly before following the familiar sound.


	5. Road II

For the first time in an existence that had lasted eons, Castiel was distracted.  He was finding it a strange sensation.  In the four days since Dean had summoned him to an empty highway, raging like a child over his broken toys, Castiel’s wings had carried him all over the world and back to Heaven more than once; nonetheless, he could not dismiss the impression that some part of him had never left the living room of Robert Singer, staring into the intense, sad eyes of Sam Winchester.

The young man had been desperate—that much Castiel knew, even before he spoke.  From the moment the angel had landed beside the Impala, watching the cloud of dust from Dean’s tattered wheel slowly settle back onto the shoulder, it had been clear that Sam was in pain—but the furrows in his brow and the tight, anxious way he twisted his hands told Castiel that this was emotional pain, the unavoidable pangs of human existence, and that was out of his realm.  He had meant to leave the younger hunter as soon as he conveyed the Winchesters to a safe place, as soon as Dean turned away from him to rail at something else—but then Sam had started talking, and Castiel had found himself unable to move.

The look in Sam’s eyes had told Castiel that he needed something very much from the angel, needed more than anything in that moment for him to understand something, but Castiel had not known what it was.  His business elsewhere was nonnegotiable, and so he had departed—but his mind kept straying back to that moment, to the clench of Sam’s fingernails in his palms and those deep, desolate eyes staring back at him, waiting for a response.  Castiel did not know what he would have said, but all the same he found himself wondering whether that troubled expression might eventually have slipped from Sam’s face, if he had stayed.

 _Did something happen between you and Sam?_   That was what Dean had asked Castiel when he appeared in a nameless roadside motel two days later to check in with the Winchesters.  He had found Dean alone, sprawled out on a double bed watching the television with indolent eyes, a foil-wrapped burrito in one hand and the remote in the other.  Sam, he was told, was out looking for a salad.

 _Something?_ Castiel had echoed, watching a clump of rice and sour cream fall from Dean’s mouth onto his shirt.

Dean rolled his eyes.  _Yeah, numb nuts.  Two days ago when you dumped us at Bobby’s—no thanks for that, by the way.  Ever since then he’s been all like…_ Dean pulled his shoulders up toward his ears and wriggled his hands.  _Meh-eh.  All moody and shit.  Did you guys have a fight or something?_

Castiel had considered that—but he had seen the Winchesters fight, and he and Dean had argued, in a way, and the look Sam gave him had been nothing like that.  _No_ , he replied after a moment.

Dean snorted around a mouthful of burrito.  _Yeah, didn’t think so_ , he garbled out.  Castiel could not tell if the words were sincere—but he had done what he’d come to do, and so he’d departed without another word, not particularly interested in watching Dean devour a burrito as long as his forearm.  But the hunter’s words had followed him into the void, picking at Castiel’s certainty, and by the fourth day since he had left Sam standing in the dim, cluttered living room Castiel found he was no longer so sure.  In the midst of flight the image of that moment came back to him—the heaviness of the air, the darkness in Sam’s eyes as he had taken flight.  Castiel reached out for his sense of Sam, and found him alone, and changed direction.

He landed in a room full of light, surrounded by books.  The Winchesters were staying for now in a lodge in central Washington; Castiel had appeared in its small library, walls of soft, dark wood hidden behind a massive stone fireplace and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves overflowing with colored spines.  Two full walls were dominated by large windows, offering a view of pine forests and the rolling timberline covered in unbroken snow, and arranged in front of each window was an assortment of leather furniture, deep armchairs and supple brown sofas, the seats worn soft with long use.  Sam had rejected them all, and was seated instead in the corner of one windowsill, his legs curled up against the glass and a book resting on his knees, wearing thick white socks but no shoes.  Outside the snow was falling, and Sam’s head was turned to watch the descending flakes as they brushed the window and disintegrated, an endless shower stretching out across the silent landscape.

He seemed so focused that for a long moment Castiel held his peace, wondering if the young man preferred to be alone.  When two minutes passed without Sam turning the page in his book, he chose to speak.

“Hello, Sam.”

Sam started against the window and turned his head, blinking at the angel who had appeared behind him.  For an instant his expression seemed concerned, or possibly wary—but then Sam’s features cleared and he pushed himself straighter in his seat, one leg sliding down to dangle from the windowsill as he offered Castiel a little half-smile.

“Cas.  Hey.  It’s been a few days.” One of Sam’s hands flitted up to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear, and then back to the cover of his book as he rubbed his thumb absently across the paperback creases.  “Dean said you stopped by in Wyoming.  I guess I was out.”

Castiel considered the young man in front of him.  Sam seemed much the same as he always did when he spoke to the angel—genial and polite, obliging of his interruption—but still Castiel felt that Sam was somehow different, guarded, as if he were holding something back that he had not been before.  It was so different from the state in which he had left Sam only a few days earlier—his expression open, desperate, the emotions Castiel could not read floating right there on the surface.  Castiel discovered he could not read Sam this way, either.  His eyes slipped back to the book.

“Are you researching?” the angel asked, studying the cover image of a submarine trapped in the writhing tentacles of a large squid.

Sam glanced down at the book as well, and then closed it and dropped it onto the windowsill beside his foot, revealing the title _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ as his hands drew back to his lap.  “Uh… no.  Just reading.  Dean’s looking into a few things in the area, but we don’t have a case yet, so…” Sam took a breath as though preparing himself for a long explanation, but then paused, looking up at Castiel with drawn brows.  “Did you need something, Cas?” the young man asked, waving one hand in the vague direction of the library’s door.  “If this is a check-in, I think Dean’s out exploring the town…”

“It is not,” Castiel told him.  But as Sam’s face cleared and he looked up at the angel, waiting for an explanation, Castiel found he did not know how to ask the questions he had come with.  Though time had moved on and the Winchesters with it, he realized that he had still somehow expected to find Sam exactly as he had left him, forlorn and wanting in a dark room strewn with books and papers in their own stacks of desperation.  He was not sure what to do with Sam’s steady eyes, in a room with so much light, where all the books were on the shelves.  Castiel stepped forward and lifted Sam’s book into his hands.  “What are you reading about?” he asked, turning the book over to consider every side.

Sam tugged at the hair at the back of his neck.  “Well, it’s, um…” The young man ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek, and then tipped his head from side to side, as though searching for words.  “It’s a classic,” Sam finished at last, blinking at the book with a doubtful expression that Castiel did not understand.  “It’s pretty famous.  I’ve never read it before, but I found it in the library here so I just thought I’d… take a look, I guess.” Sam glanced up at Castiel and then back to the book, raking his fingers through his hair.  “Patch another hole in my education.”

Castiel braced the blue spine in his palm and ran his thumb down the smooth paper on the other side, the slotted edges discolored by a thick black pen, the oil of years of hands turning the pages one by one.  He set it back on the windowsill beside Sam’s socked feet.  “You did not read it while you were in college?” he asked softly.

Sam had been considering the battered old book, or perhaps the snowflakes melting into glittering drops of water against the window—but at the question, his eyes snapped back to Castiel, his lips parted in surprise.  As quickly as it had arisen, the look faded again, and the angel was left with another expression he couldn’t interpret, Sam’s lips pressed lightly together, his forehead smooth.  Then Sam breathed out and his mouth quirked up into a half-smile, more skeptical than amused.

“You don’t have to be nice to me, Cas,” he said.

There was something hard in his tone, like a denial, or an ultimatum—somewhere between the sounds of faith and cynicism.  Castiel shifted his stance.  “I don’t intend to be,” he said.

Sam gave a brief, surprised laugh—Castiel wondered if he had used the wrong words again.  “Okay—I’ll try not to take that at face value,” Sam murmured, rubbing one foot over the other.  When he looked up, his eyes were softer again, brighter, and Castiel pressed on before the distance could return and darken them once more.

“I have… thought about our conversation several days ago.” Castiel paused and felt a frown creasing his lips.  “The timing of my departure was unfortunate.”

Sam sat carefully back against the window, his spine straight where it pressed into the foggy glass, and though he shook his head Castiel could feel his guard coming up again, a disconnect between his easygoing voice and the tense lines of his shoulders.  “Cas, I get it, I do,” Sam said, lifting one hand as if to pacify him.  “You had somewhere to be.”

“Yes,” Castiel agreed, wondering what it was in Sam’s expression that seemed to fall at that one little word.  “But I should not have left without saying something in return.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped under his sweatshirt, and he wrapped his arms tight across his stomach, as though holding something in.  “There’s nothing to say.”

Castiel considered Sam for a long moment without speaking.  Then he took another step toward the window and the young man leaning against it, and pressed his hands down against his coat, feeling all the little imperfections in the weave of the fabric.  “I have not known Jessica Moore,” he began, and Sam’s head shot up, startled hazel eyes locking onto his.  “I know so few of them, before they move on.  But I know that her soul—”

“Don’t,” Sam said.  Castiel stopped abruptly, and blinked down at Sam—and then he wondered why he hadn’t seen it in time: all the desperation and pain in Sam’s face as he shook his head over and over.  “Cas, please, just…” Sam’s voice broke and he ducked his head, blinking quickly against dark, wet eyes.  “Don’t talk about her like—”

Sam took a deep breath and held it.  He bent forward and pressed his forehead to his knees, and squeezed his arms around his stomach, and Castiel watched him, and let the silence fall.  Nothing moved in the library except the snow outside, beating futilely, relentlessly against the glass.  Castiel watched the storm and wondered if anything else could move out there, under such weight.  Then Sam exhaled into his jeans and lifted his head, and Castiel looked down to meet his eyes, the unshed tears pulling back behind a crooked smile.

“Sorry,” Sam said, though he had done nothing.  He pushed a hand back through his hair and shook it distractedly, scattering the brown strands across his shoulders.  “Look, um—this was a mistake.  You should probably…” He broke off as if waiting for Castiel to finish the excuse, and then ran his tongue over his lips, giving a forced nod.  “I’m sure Dean’s back by now, so…” Another pause, another hesitation, and once again Castiel found himself staring into dark eyes that were waiting for something, something he did not know how to give.  Then Sam sat up straight and braced one hand against the windowsill, the other gripping his knee like a vise, and Castiel recognized the moments before movement, Sam’s body coiling for the escape.  “You know what, I’ll just—”

“Sam.”

Sam hesitated, his body tense—but his name wasn’t going to be enough to stop him, Castiel knew, not for long.  With a twitch of uncertainty, he reached out and laid his hand over Sam’s where it clutched his knee—and then he realized it was the second time he had ever done that, taken Sam’s hand.  He tightened his fingers around cold, white knuckles.

“I have erred,” Castiel said.  Sam didn’t answer, nor did he move—had stopped breathing, even, watching the intersection of their hands.  But his body was still stiff with the urge to flee, instinct and adrenaline and overwhelming emotion making his heart race, the beat so fast and so heavy that Castiel could feel it in his fingers.  He softened his hold but left his hand where it was.  “I should not speak of things I do not understand.”

For a fleeting moment, Sam’s eyes flickered up to the angel’s face; then he looked away again, his fingernails digging small crescents into the fabric of his jeans.  “It’s not like that, Cas,” he said—something he said all the time, and something Castiel was beginning to think had almost no meaning.  Sam bent his elbow and slowly lifted his other hand from the grain of the windowsill, and then tilted back to rest against the frame, his body gradually relaxing though his fingers remained rigid under Castiel’s.  “I know you didn’t mean…” Sam let out a slow breath, and then pressed his lips together, closing his eyes against the light of the snow.  “I don’t even know why I said it—that thing I told you at Bobby’s.  It was kind of a shit day, and… look, you can just—forget I said anything.”

Castiel considered the memory that had been his sole focus for days—dark eyes and desperation and the silence of waiting humming in the air—and he tightened his hand around Sam’s, careful not to crush those long, fragile bones.  “I do not wish to forget it,” he said.

Sam exhaled and his warm breath bloomed against the glass.  “I don’t know what you want me to say, Cas.”

Castiel was silent for a long moment.  “Tell me about Stanford,” he said at last.

Sam ducked his head, a puff of air that was a laugh and not a laugh at all slipping past his lips.  “I’m pretty sure you’ve got more important places to be.”

“I don’t.”

Sam slid his hand out from under the angel’s, fingertip by fingertip.  “It was a long time ago,” he said, pressing his palm against the cold glass.  Castiel watched a circle of steam spread outward from his fingers.  For a full minute, they were quiet together, Sam studying the world beyond the window and Castiel searching for any hints in the contours of his face, wondering if this too was a kind of waiting.  Then he tipped his head to one side and caught Sam’s gaze through his reflection in the glass, staring back into hazel eyes transparent with the snow.

“Tell me about unlawful search and seizure.”

Sam’s eyebrows drew together and he turned away from the window to stare at Castiel in person, a crinkle of confusion upsetting his forehead.  “The court regulation?” he asked, blinking.

Castiel frowned slightly.  “The card in your laundry basket.”

Sam looked down.  Castiel couldn’t tell if he were looking at the hardwood floor or the polished windowsill, or at the cover of the book by Jules Verne, just resting next to his feet.  He wondered if Sam was going to answer him at all.  Then there was a shift in the air between them, so slight that Castiel doubted at first that he had truly felt anything—but slowly Sam’s shoulders loosened, his body slumping into the corner of the wall, and he reached out to cup the yellowed book in his hand, his long fingers cradling the smooth edge of the pages.

“It was a pretty small room,” Sam said, so softly that a crack from the fireplace behind them nearly erased his words.  Sam tilted the book until the cover caught the light.  “I hadn’t done laundry in a week because I was studying like crazy for that exam—I got the basket out of the closet to remind myself to do it, but it just made the room smaller.” Sam ran the tip of his index finger down the page edges; his skin on the paper gave off a dull, stuttered scrape, the only sound in the world for an instant as he paused to catch his breath, his lips twitching up into the curve of a tiny smile.  “I didn’t find that card until two days later, when I was finally throwing all my junk in a washing machine.  It was halfway inside a pair of sweatpants.” Sam shook his head lightly.  “I never forgot Weeks v. U.S. after that.”

Castiel studied Sam in the glow of the winter light, the softening lines of his face and the absent curl of his fingers, the eyes that were brighter, now, with flakes of reflected snow.  “Did you pass your exam?” he asked.

Sam laughed under his breath.  “Yeah.  I did.”

Castiel shifted in his polished black shoes.  “Congratulations, Sam,” he said.

Sam lifted his head in surprise, and as he stared back into wide hazel eyes, Castiel wondered if he had said the wrong thing again, the aftertaste of the words heavy and unfamiliar on his tongue—but then Sam was smiling at him, and though it wasn’t the warmest smile he had ever seen on the young man’s face, a little reluctant, a little bittersweet, Castiel felt his own shoulders relaxing, just a little, at the sight of it.

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam said, tipping his head back to rest against the window.  Castiel nodded once.  Then he flattened his hands against his pockets and felt his brow furrow, curiosity drawing his eyes back to Sam’s loosened fingers.

“You still have not explained the contents of that book,” he said, pointing at the giant squid.

Sam’s laughter was a pleasant sound, Castiel decided.


	6. Road III

Sam wasn’t entirely sure why he didn’t tell his brother about Cas’s visit.  Maybe it was because Dean had woken him from a comfortable doze by tossing a pillow into his face; maybe it was the slightly jerky, insensitive comment about how he thought Sam had finally kicked the studying thing; or maybe it was just that shit-eating grin plastered all over his face.  At the time, Sam had thrown the pillow back, wrinkling his nose as his brother sidestepped easily, and promised himself just a little more time before they had to talk.

But somehow, staring at Dean making crinkle snakes out of their straw wrappers at the diner didn’t create the opening that Sam was waiting for, and neither did three hours of Metallica at brain-damagingly high volume— _to keep me awake, Sammy!_ Sam had offered to talk to his brother instead, but Dean just gave him a look.  _I said to keep me awake, dude!_

And apparently to keep Sam awake, too.  Dean’s good mood made him sing along, beating his hands against the steering wheel and tossing his head back and forth in a manner that would have been highly dangerous if they weren’t the only ones on the road at this insane hour.  They didn’t have a case; his brother was just driving them to... _wherever_ , but somehow they always seemed to find a case in the end, and Sam privately wondered if his brother wasn’t part bloodhound, sniffing out the supernatural everywhere they went. 

And by now, it seemed silly and even a little awkward to bring up that Cas had come when they were staying at the lodge.  Sam suspected that the fact he hadn’t told Dean right away had some sort of significance, but he refused to dwell, because it was a nice memory. 

 _No Leaf Clover_ started pounding through the seats, the melody also whining through Dean’s nose just slightly off key, and Sam shifted in his seat, lifting his arm up to rest against the cool window.  He tipped his head back against the seat, stretching his neck, and wondered if Dean intended to stop at all tonight.  Sam let his head list to the side so he could study his brother, and let out a little huff at what he saw.  If he had a Magic-8-Ball, he had a feeling the message would come up _Outlook Is Bleak_.

He had always wondered at that particular message.  One straight week of sitting in the car as a child and listening as Dean posed his every thought in the form of a question to the plastic ball, reading off, _Yes_ , _No_ , _Probably_ , _Ask Again Later_ , and then _Outlook Is Bleak_ , which always seemed a little overly heavy.  Sam remembered wishing it had a _Shut Up and Ask Me Never_ response.  The memory still brought a little smile to his lips.

He had forgotten to turn his head away before letting the fond expression overtake his face, and so a second later Dean was waggling his eyebrows at Sam and shoving him playfully in the arm.

“I know I’m good-looking, Sam,” he said, blowing on his fist before rubbing it against his shirt and turning down the music slightly, “but as your brother, I feel it’s my duty to tell you that look should only be used in bars, and preferably with chicks.”

Sam rolled his eyes, sitting up straighter.  “Yeah,” he agreed sarcastically. “Your lame car dance is irresistible. I was just thinking.”

Dean just let his eyebrows climb toward his hairline, stepping up his dance moves to include darting his head toward the window and then back at his brother.

“God, you are so annoying,” Sam told him.  He lifted his hands in pantomime, shaking them in front of him.  “Oh Magic-8-Ball, Magic-8-Ball, will my brother ever finally grow up?”

Dean was looking at Sam out of the corner of his eye, planting his hands on the wheel, as he gave a shake of his head that said he thought that _Sam_ was the immature one.  Sam met his gaze for a moment, and his brother gave a half shrug. “Well?” he demanded. “What does the invisible 8-Ball think?”

Sam glancing down at his empty hands, before shaking his head with a smile. “Apparently the outlook is bleak.”

Dean rocked his shoulders back and forth as the song rolled over with a crackle of the old tape.  “Dude, your 8-Ball is broken,” his brother informed, licking his lips.  “They don’t say that ever.”

Sam blinked, letting his hands fall into his lap. “They don’t?” 

“Never, Sam. God, you have a really depressing streak in there somewhere, you know that?  They say, like, _Outlook Not So Good_ , and _Better Not Tell You Now—_ vague stuff.” He shook his head and pinned Sam with a look that was somehow both incredulous and concerned.  “Your outlook is bleak, man.” 

Sam turned away toward the window with a half-shrug that he knew wouldn’t satisfy his brother.  So he didn’t remember things right all the time—who could say their history wasn’t a little revisionist?  The tape skipped as the car dipped a little, one of the front wheels hitting a pothole in the road.  Dean tightened his hands around the steering wheel, and Sam was on the verge of apologizing for the whole thing, when his brother spoke, suddenly all smiles again.

“So as long as you’ve got that thing, maybe you could ask it about our resident flyboy.” He made a vague gesture upward.  “Cas is late by like a day for his little check-in, and he’s usually so fucking anal about punctuality.”

Sam winced slightly. “Yeah, well,” he said softly.  This was the moment, the opening, the time to just tell Dean, and suddenly Sam wished he had a real Magic 8-Ball to take the decision out of his hands.  “He’s probably busy with, you know...angel stuff.”

“Whatever.” Dean was reaching for the tape deck, head already bobbing. “As long as he’s not watching us while invisible, or appearing close enough to crawl up my ass.” He sent Sam one last smile before the music was blasting again.

Sam returned the smile before turning away, this time resting his head against the window.  The dark glass reflected his fuzzy form, too close to make out any details, and Dean dancing in the background, miles and miles of black rushing by beyond.

He still wasn’t exactly sure why he didn’t tell his brother about Castiel.  Because there had been something more, sitting there rubbing his socked feet together and laughing, maybe something that felt different, special.  His thoughts swirled, and he could almost imagine the foamy blue liquid sloshing around his brain— _Yes, No, Most Likely, Cannot Predict Now, Don’t Count On It, Outlook Is Bleak._ Except that wasn’t really a choice; more vague, like Dean had said, more like _Reply Hazy, Try Again Later._

Metallica droned on as Sam closed his eyes, determined to get a few hours of sleep.  Someone had to be ready to take over driving in the morning.  


	7. The Waffle King

Sam walked across the parking lot back toward the motel, juggling two coffees and a newspaper.  It was midmorning, the sun melting the frost from car windows and spreading warmth across the hunter’s broad back.  He stopped for a moment, using the newspaper to shade his eyes and look up at the sky.  The chill of winter still bit through the air, but at least no snowstorms seemed to be chasing them, and they were in no hurry—just heading back to Bobby’s for a long weekend and a chance to restock after an impromptu hunt.

Last night they had finished off Lem the grocery store ghost, a middle-aged man who’d had a heart attack in the middle of the cereal aisle and now spent his time knocking Lucky Charms down on unsuspecting shoppers.  They wouldn’t even have found the case if Dean hadn’t been playing with the EMF reader while Sam tried to shop.  The highlight of the hunt had been when Dean got Honeycomb in his eye from an exploding cereal box and tripped into a display of cans.  They had been scouring the store for a gold filing apparently missing when sad, family-less, friendless Lem was cremated.  Dean took his food fights very personally—something Sam had learned at a very young age—and as the tall hunter crawled across the floor on his stomach, sliding his hands under shelves through at least three years of dust and debris and pulling out fossilized gum, peanuts, and bottle caps, Dean had been shouting and chasing Lem through the produce section with his rock salt gun. 

Sam found the filling, not even bothering to stand up—just pulled it out from under a display and then, still on his stomach, he ripped into a salt packet with his teeth and emptied a miniature liquor bottle over the filling, lighting it up right there.  The end result was that Dean was covered in bits of fruit exploded by rock salt, and Sam looked like he had been rolling around in the dustbin.  Dean took one look at Sam and then bent over laughing. 

“Dude, you look like you lost a fight with a dustbuster.” More laughter followed the pronouncement.  “You have like an extra half a head of lint.” Sam was slightly disgusted by the thought, sliding his hand to his head to find an indefinable, soft gray substance coating his fingers.

“You need a shower, Sammy,” Dean informed.  Sam snorted, feeling laughter bubble up in his own chest.

“You’re one to talk.  What did the fruit ever do to you?” Something wet dripped from Dean’s elbow and smacked the floor, and his brother looked at himself, stunned for a moment, before the grin spread even wider and he clapped Sam on the shoulder.  They walked out arm and arm, laughing and pushing each other away, because Dean didn’t want Sam’s coating of floor grime anywhere near him, and the last thing Sam needed was to be sprayed with fruit slime.  Sam couldn’t remember the last time either of them had laughed so hard.

They had made it back to their little hotel room, kind of a junky place with a broken curtain rod that kept one side of curtains perpetually sliding open, an old boxy TV, and padded chairs that were so hard on the backside Sam wondered if the rips weren’t openings through which all the stuffing had been removed.  Still, Dean had slept in and slept soundly, something that Sam never used to worry about with his brother.  But since Hell, Sam knew he spent many nights tossing turning—or worse, moaning hoarsely in his sleep, a sound that twisted around in Sam’s guts.  He knew better than to try and bring it up to Dean.  His _endless prying_ , as his brother put it, only ever seemed to make things worse.

Now Sam tucked the newspaper under his arm as he approached the Impala where it was parked right outside their room.  The accommodations might have left something to be desired, but at least the location was convenient, right across from a coffee shop sharing some of its parking with a little strip mall, and a gas station right down the street.  Dean had just started flopping over in his bed when Sam had slipped on his shoes and left, a sure sign that he would be up soon and jonesing for a morning pick-me-up.  There were a few other people in the lot: an older woman waving at a gray-haired man as she exited a salon, a few girls walking in a close group, purses swinging from their shoulders. 

Sam rounded the Impala, bringing the coffee up to his lips to take a sip and glancing toward to the room.  He ended up spewing a mouthful of brown liquid, which luckily missed the polished door of the car as it sprayed into the slush by the curb.  An involuntary sound escaped his mouth at the sight before him, and a wince ran through him as another gasp followed his; he looked over to see the older woman frozen halfway to the man with a look of horror on her face.

Sam wanted to be horrified too.  The broken curtain had slipped down, leaving a perfect opening into the room, which was right now filled two-thirds of the way with Dean’s bare ass, bouncing up and down as he no doubt searched around on the floor where he had dumped all his clothes the night before in the search for a pre-bed candy bar snack. 

Sam was torn between rushing in and sewing the damn curtains together, and turning around and pretending he had nothing to do with the room.  The woman was pointing, her gray-haired husband slowly shaking his head.  Sam squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. When he opened them, the decision was made for him: his brother was hopping into boxers, halfway pulled over the full moon he was displaying to the entire lot, when suddenly there was another familiar figure in the window, a swish of trench coat.  Sam couldn’t see Castiel’s head—the top frill of the curtain cut him off at the shoulders—but he could see Dean start and fall over out of sight finally, and the angel walking toward him, leaning down.

Sam jogged the last few steps toward the door, imagining how this would go.  Dean still hadn’t quite forgiven Cas for appearing in the bathroom during his shower time a few weeks ago, and it didn’t help that the angel didn’t even seem to have a grasp on the difference between dressed and nude.  Sam set one coffee on top of the other, digging the hotel room key out of the pocket of his jeans and sliding the card through the sensor.  The light blinked over to green and Sam pushed the door inward.

“Damn it!”  That was Dean’s voice, cursing as usual.  “Do you, like, sit up there waiting for the most inappropriate time to ambush me—you better just keep that hand to yourself, pal!” Either Castiel wasn’t saying anything at all or his voice was too low for Sam to hear.  The door clicked behind him and Sam turned to face the room.

“Dean, Cas,” he said by way of greeting, trying to keep a straight face.  His brother had managed to pull his boxers at least most of the way on, though he probably had a serious case of plumber’s display, but he was still sitting on the floor between the bed and the wall.  Castiel was leaning over, hand slowly returning from where it had been offered to the downed hunter.  Dean had one finger raised warningly at the angel, and Cas’s patented blank expression was plastered on his face.

“I brought coffee,” Sam offered holding out one of the cups in front of him.  He debated whether he should tell Dean that he had just been displaying himself to the whole of the strip mall, but as his brother gestured Cas harshly to _back the fuck up_ as he kept getting dressed, Sam decided against it.  Instead he set Dean’s cup within easy reach on the stand next to the TV and walked over to the window, fiddling with the curtain with one hand while he sipped at his coffee.  In the end, he settled for throwing the whole of the cloth over the top of the bar.

Dean’s head poked through the top of his shirt and he gave Sam a strange look.  “What the hell are you doing?” he wanted to know.  The tall hunter gave a sort of half shrug.

“Just thought we might want some privacy…” he said, eyes flicking away from Dean.  Castiel was studying him and Sam felt his lips twitch the second his brother looked away.

“You are such a girl, Sam,” Dean said, stalking past Castiel and grabbing his coffee.  “And paranoid—no one is watching.” Dean was busy spinning the cardboard drink holder around the cup, so the smile that darted across Sam’s face ended up only being for Cas.

“You’re probably right,” Sam said, giving Dean a nod.  His brother looked up suspiciously for a moment, but then he seemed to remember his first beef, whirling to face Castiel.

“And you—what the hell?  The last person who stared at me like that at least had the decency to buy me breakfast.  This better not be another of your little checkups…”

As it turned out, it was another “checkup.” It was sort of painfully obvious even before Cas had told them that the angel had never been anyone’s guardian before.  But Castiel was taking his duties seriously, though Sam wasn’t sure the angel totally understood what he was doing.  As well as being available at their call, the angel appeared every two days like clockwork to ask a series of questions about their activities—Dean likened it to being under a third-degree angel IRS audit.  Cas had been about to start in the hotel, while Dean prepared to blow a gasket, and then Sam had spoken up.

“Why not buy breakfast?”

And that was how they ended up at the Waffle King—Sam’s treat.  It had taken a few tries to convince Castiel that he could not just stand at the end of the table, and had to sit down.  Now he perched in the edge the red foam of the booth next to Sam.  A pretty red-haired waitress, who must have been slightly psychic, brought coffee first.  Her nametag read _Peggy_ with a heart drawn at the end, and she seemed to be most interested in pouring Dean’s coffee while he complimented her eyes, but Sam ended up with a splash of the liquid in his cup, too, and Cas as well, though he didn’t ask for it.  At least it cheered Dean up, the grin staying plastered on his face even as he turned back from watching her walk away to the kitchen to place their orders.

"Now,” Dean said, fixing Cas with a stern look which he then widened to include his brother, “I don’t want any stupid questions for the duration of this meal.  No work talk, no chick-flick moments, no sappy looks.  It is now officially waffle time.” Sam just rolled his eyes, pulling the paper ring from around his silverware, but Castiel frowned, studying the hunter and then the clock on the wall.

“What is waffle time?” He pinned a serious gaze on Dean.  The older hunter shook his head, looking to the ceiling as though searching for patience.

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about—stupid questions.” Dean started scooting himself across the plastic seat.  “You take this one, Sam,” he said, sliding from behind the table and nodding toward the restroom sign in the corner.  “I gotta shake the snake.” Castiel’s frown deepened, and while Sam only managed to say his brother’s name before the older hunter sidled off, he hoped the tone somehow conveyed all his exasperation and disbelief.  Cas had turned his blue eyes to Sam, pinning him to the red vinyl.  The tall hunter shifted uncomfortably, giving him an awkward half-smile.

“So waffle time is, uh…the time when Dean’s busy stuffing his face with, well…waffles.” The silence stretched between them, and Sam wetted his lips with his tongue.  “Does that, uh…make sense?” Cas tipped his head.

“He cannot answer questions or be talked to or it will interfere with his eating process.” Sam missed a beat, but then smiled.

“Sure,” the tall hunter decided.  He unrolled his silverware, putting his napkin in his lap and lifting his coffee to his lips.  Luckily this time he hadn’t yet taken a sip when Cas spoke, and so avoided spewing another mouthful of brown liquid, this one possibly over the table, possibly over the angel.

“What about to ‘shake the snake’?” Cas repeated carefully, and Sam cursed Dean’s crassness as he wiped coffee from his lower lip with the thick napkin. He had hoped that one was just going to slip by.  Castiel’s dark eyes were fixed unblinkingly on him, and Sam played with the napkin between his hands before just shrugging.

“It means he’s gotta pee, Cas.  It’s kind of a euphemism for a guy taking a whiz.” Part of Sam wanted to add a gesture to make it clear, but a bigger part of him refused to do that in a family diner in front of an angel of the Lord.

“Dean is relieving himself in the bathroom,” Cas said matter-of-factly.  One of Sam’s eyes closed partway as his face screwed up a little.  “I am not allowed in there with him.” Thank God his coffee was almost cold and almost gone.  Sam sent a smile to the red-haired waitress who had walked up with their food just in time to hear Castiel’s declaration.  She looked quickly away from Sam, who wasn’t sure what he would have said to her if she’d stuck around anyway.

Well, Dean wasn’t getting a phone number now, which would probably surprise him, because from what he could tell Peggy had sprayed a generous amount of whipped cream in the shape of a heart on Dean’s waffle tower.  Sam spun his own plate of Belgian waffles with strawberry syrup around, and despite himself he felt a little laugh on his lips. 

“So these are waffles,” Sam told the angel next to him—he wasn’t even sure why, except that he felt light for some reason, like he couldn’t fight the smile on his face.  “Mine are strawberry; Dean’s are classic.”

Castiel looked between the plates. “What is the difference?” he inquired.

Sam smiled, cutting a small slice from the side of his waffles before reaching over and doing the same to the bottommost waffle of Dean’s plate—hopefully out of his brother’s line of sight.  “Mine are better,” Sam told Castiel with a smile, and though the angel just stared at him, Sam scooped the piece he had taken from Dean’s plate through the edge of the whipped cream heart and then held it out to Cas.  The angel studied at it for a moment, but Sam held his hand steady.

“Try it,” he urged, giving the fork a little wave.

Castiel took the fork slowly, putting the food into his mouth.  He chewed mechanically and swallowed, face blank, and Sam smiled, taking the fork back from his hand.  This time he took the slice from his own plate, sliding it through the bright red strawberry syrup.  It threatened to drip and Sam held a hand under it as he lifted the second piece of waffle toward Castiel. 

"Now this is strawberry waffle.” Cas studied Sam, and then the fork with the hand held under it, before leaning forward awkwardly.  Sam had expected Cas to take the fork again, but the angel apparently wasn’t sure about the dripping pink liquid, and instead he craned his neck down, turning his head to the side and biting the waffle from the end of the fork.  Sam saw only a flash of red hair before he heard Peggy’s feet rushing away.

Some days were just like this.  That same cringe covered his features for a moment before he laughed.  Cas chewed on, staring at him, and Sam smiled brightly at the angel as he swallowed.  Castiel licked his lips slowly to clear them of any strawberry sauce, and Sam turned back to his plate, cutting his breakfast into pieces.

"You better tell me if you want more,” Sam said, not really expecting any answer except that Cas did not require anything.  Instead the angel studied Sam for a second before nodding sagely.

“Because once Dean comes back, it will be ‘waffle time,’ and there will be no more talking.”

Sam was still laughing when Dean returned and dug into his golden stack.


	8. Rain I

Rain pattered on the sidewalks, bouncing in staccato beats off the top of cars and rushing down the dirty gutters.  Sam walked fast through the downpour, the collar of his coat turned up, head ducked, hands shoved deep in his pockets.  The streetlamps were flickering on one by one down the road, creating halos of light through the watery darkness.  The only thing Sam had that needed to stay dry was his phone, tucked carefully into his breast pocket and away from the elements.  It would be hard to answer buried so deeply, but it was unlikely that it would ring. 

Dean was probably at a bar, or a strip club, or maybe even the house of a nameless, faceless girl that he wouldn’t stay the night with.  It was another change in the Dean that had come back to him from Hell—he always came back now, no matter how many women he went out and slept with, stumbling in at two or three or even five a.m. to fall into his own bed, bloodshot pupils and bags under his eyes a testament to the fact that sleep was the one thing he hadn’t done.

And Sam was worried, because he knew what it was like to avoid sleep until the body collapsed into something like unconsciousness that kept the nightmares at bay.  Dean’s experiences in Hell were eating him alive, and Sam couldn’t seem to reach him.  Not late at night when he shook him awake holding out a glass of water, holding his breath as he asked if his brother wanted to talk about it.

 _Nothing to talk about._   Dean took the water and rolled over, and Sam returned to his bed, lying ten feet away, knowing they were both awake.  And sometimes the memories seemed to backlash into anger; Dean’s eyes would go from haunted to filled with a desperate rage, and they would drive in the Impala on the open road, speeding past scenery looking for the next hunt, the next distraction. 

 _You know you can tell me anything._ Sam had lost track of the number of times he had said that to his brother, but mostly Dean’s hands just tightened on the steering wheel, his foot punching down on the accelerator as though he could outrun the question.  It was always _nothing to tell_ with Dean, _nothing to talk about, nothing to do._

Dean had initially gone out just to pick up some beer—it was another motel, another town, another hunt finished, and Sam didn’t begrudge him the chance to unwind.  Minutes later he had gotten a call that Dean had found some dive and was going to hustle some pool—bring in some cash.  Sam had refrained from calling his brother out, because it was still afternoon and the only people drinking in the kind of bars Dean went to this early were not there for a good time.  “Sure,” he found himself responding instead. “Just…be careful.”  His brother made a noncommittal noise and then hung up.

Sam stared at the phone in his hands for a few seconds before making a decision.  The sky had been gray already as he shrugged his coat on and left headed toward the library about twelve blocks away, toward the center of town.  He had noticed it on their drive in, and if he was honest with himself the idea had already been forming from that first moment.  Dean had good days and bad days since coming back, but the last few days had been increasingly bad.  Maybe it was the last case: a demon torturing innocents to try and release some seal.  Maybe he was reminded of his own torture.  Something was wrong, and so Sam had decided to approach this problem the same way he approached all the others—research.

He had spent his afternoon on the library computer looking up articles on PTSD, recovering from trauma, surviving captivity, injury, rape, helplessness—reading everything he could find and trying to figure out what he could do better, different, to help his brother.  He could have just looked these things up on his laptop at the hotel but somehow it hadn’t felt right.  He just knew that the whole thing would make Dean mad.  The library was a warm, safe haven, and maybe, just maybe, there were answers there.

He had stayed too long in the end, and when the lights had flickered and a woman had tapped him on the shoulder, saying they were going to close, Sam had been surprised to see sheets of rain falling outside.  He had fingered his phone briefly and considered calling Dean, but his brother would want to know what he had been doing there and he didn’t feel like any more lies that started with _nothing._   It was a cold rain, and Sam’s head was so full, turning all the things he had read around and around trying to find Dean somewhere in the symptoms and behaviors.  Nothing was a perfect fit.

Sam pulled a hand out of his pocket, using it to push a sopping strand of hair out of his face and glancing around at the street signs.  He wasn’t even quite halfway.  A stoplight blinked yellow before turning to red in the distance, fuzzy through the rain, and he almost didn’t hear the familiar rush of feathers in the storm before Castiel was suddenly beside him.  Sam skittered a few steps, his foot slipping off the edge of the sidewalk into the rushing water of the gutter; the tall hunter wondered if he would ever get used to the way that the angel just appeared.

"Cas,” Sam said.  His shoe had been completely submerged, and Sam tried to shake it as best he could as he stepped back up onto the walk.

“Sam,” the angel responded in an even tone.  His trench coat was being speckled with dark droplets of rain, and Sam slicked a hand back through his wet hair, trying to gather his thoughts. 

“I was just heading back to the motel,” the tall hunter began, half raising a hand in the vague direction of the little room with the double beds that were somehow so far apart these days.  “Dean is…” Sam trailed off, realizing he wasn’t sure exactly where his brother was.

“He is approximately three miles east in a…bar.” The word rolled uncertainly off of Castiel’s tongue.  “There are too many people in that area for me to appear.”

“Oh.” Of course the angel knew where his brother was.  A drop of water rolled off of Sam’s nose as he stared at Castiel.  The angel’s eyes looked darker somehow—or maybe it was just the backlighting of the streetlamp.

“I have come to tell you that I looked into the demon summoning.” From their last case, Sam realized; he had been able to tell that the ritual and the symbols on the floor were way above him—way above Bobby even, maybe—so he had informed Cas when the angel next stopped in.

“It was incomplete, Sam,” Castiel went on. “Upon completion, it would have released one of the lesser Princes of Hell, but it has been dismantled.”

A small weight lifted from Sam’s shoulders, knowing that at least that case was in their rearview mirror.  More rain was splashing down his face, sending a shiver down Sam’s spine.

“Thanks, Cas, for taking care of that.”  He shifted a little, feeling the unpleasant squish of his wet shoe.  “Do you mind if we walk?” The tall hunter didn’t even wait for Castiel’s nod before he was heading toward the warmth of the hotel again.  He really wanted to beat Dean home and be waiting there for him, for whenever.  Castiel’s footsteps echoed alongside him, and as Sam turned his head down against a particularly vicious gust of rain, he found himself staring at Castiel’s shoes—immaculately clean black Oxfords.  So different from Sam’s worn brown shoes, muddied, scuffed and damaged from everywhere he’d been.  Maybe that was the problem.

Sam looked up sideways at the figure walking next to him; the chilling rain seemed to slide right off of Cas, his black hair curling with the drops, his dark eyes staring straight ahead.  The pair passed beneath the circle of another streetlamp, and Sam realized he could imagine the wings he had never seen.  His steps slowed until he stopped.  Castiel did the same, turning to face the hunter who was staring at him through the shards of rain that hung in the air.

“Sam?” Cas questioned, and Sam found himself shuffling backward slightly, edging toward the darkness outside the circle.

“Dean’s hurting, Cas,” Sam said, watching as the angel’s eyebrows drew together in consternation. “And I don’t think I’m the one who can help him.” Sam felt liquid behind his eyes, but only the rain continued to run around them.  Castiel’s frown deepened, and he closed his eyes momentarily before opening them and fixing them on Sam.

“He is uninjured, Sam,” Castiel assured him.  Sam hugged his arms across his chest for a moment, shuffling farther back.

“It’s not that kind of wound, Cas,” Sam told him. “It’s Hell.  The memories and nightmares are killing him.” It was difficult to understand where the sting in his eyes was coming from—the cold of the rain maybe, the loneliness of the empty hotel, or the distant eyes of the angel in front of him.  “He needs you to help him, Cas.  Please.” The angel he had become so familiar with looked almost like a stranger encased in the light.  The rain spattering around him almost seemed to glow.

“I will try, Sam,” Castiel said after a moment of silence, and then he was gone, vanished, and Sam was alone at the edge of the light.  He wrapped his arms tighter around himself, not sure where all the warmth had gone, and hurried as quickly as he could back toward the room.

All the words, all the things he’d read, they seemed meaningless, and Sam wasn’t sure why it was his heart and not his achingly cold fingers that seemed to hurt so much right now.  He could see the motel in the distance when his phone started to buzz, vibrating against his chest.  Sam scrabbled to unzip his coat and reach his pocket.  He caught the button on the last ring, bringing the phone up to his wet ear and cupping a hand against the storm.

“Dean,” he said.  There was really only one person who would be calling him.

“Where the hell are you, Sam?” Dean’s voice demanded.  He sounded a little drunk, but not plastered, and as he got closer Sam could see the Impala parked out in front of their corner room.  The bright neon sign of the motel blinked at him.

“Dude, I’m not far—I’m coming back right now.  In fact, come open the door.” Sam left his jacket unzipped and jogged across the black asphalt, shaking himself a little as he reached the awning that covered the line of doors. 

He heard Dean grumbling on the other end of the line before the door at the end of the row opened, and Dean’s head stuck out, his hair standing on end.  He looked both ways before spotting Sam.  The tall hunter waved a little, shutting off his phone and walking the last few steps at a more sedate pace.  Dean studied him as he approached, apparently not at all impressed with what he saw.

“You look like a drowned rat,” his brother told him.  Sam tried for a half smile, but it felt a little waterlogged and Dean just rolled his eyes, yanking him in by his elbow.

“I got caught out in the rain,” Sam explained. 

“You look more like you got left out in the rain,” Dean countered, crossing his arms. “Where the hell were you?”

Sam peeled off his shoes.  The warm air of the hotel room made his hair hang even more limply, and more water slid down his face.  “I was just at the library.” Dean’s eyes were boring into him disbelievingly, and Sam knew he had to change the subject.  “Cas stopped by.” It came out more coldly than he’d intended, and as Sam moved farther into the room, continuing to shed wet clothing, he hurried on.  “I mean, he said he checked out that summoning thing for us and took care of it.”

“You met Cas at the library,” Dean wanted to know, and the glee in expression said that nerd date jokes were on the tip of his tongue.

“Relax,” Sam suggested, the familiarity of the banter bringing a smile to his face. “I was on my way back already.”

Dean’s face fell for a moment as he lost his chance to tease his younger brother, but then his brows drew together.  “Wait, on your way back…as in walking through sheets of rain?” Dean demanded. “And he just left you there?”

“Dean,” Sam said, letting a sigh slip from between his lips.

“Oh, c’mon, Sam.” Anger was an expression also very familiar on Dean, so Sam just shook his head as his brother went on.  “Some guardian angel, leaving you out there to get pneumonia and die.”

“Dude, I think that’s a little dramatic,” Sam pointed out—but somehow Dean’s pacing rant and practically ordering Sam to bed felt so much better than empty eyes and the long nights up alone, and he hoped, he really did, that Cas could help his brother.

It was hours later when Sam was awakened by the rustle of feathers.  He hadn’t been sleeping deeply.  His throat was scratchy, and his feet cold despite the extra blanket he had heaped on top of them.  His whole head seemed to be wrapped in gauze.  Maybe that was why he just continued to doze, blinking heavy eyes toward his brother’s bed.  Dean was already sweating, his face pinched as he was tortured by some memory he couldn’t bring himself to share with Sam—but this time Castiel was leaning over him, reaching a hand out and laying his fingers gently against the hunter’s temple.

Sam swallowed against the buzz in the back of his throat that was suddenly so dry.  He couldn’t see Castiel’s expression, but he could see the lines soothe from his brother’s face, the sudden exhale of all his air.  Dean’s face smoothed into a serene smile, and Sam was happy, he really was, but something he couldn’t quite place was still burning in his chest.  Jealousy, maybe, or longing—neither really did it justice, and all Sam knew in that moment, as he watched Castiel stare down at his brother, was that some things were just not meant to be.


	9. Rain II

It was long after midnight when Castiel landed at the foot of two double beds, the breath of his flight ruffling a stack of napkins on the table.  The hotel room was dark, and silent; its occupants had surrendered to sleep already, and neither of them shifted as Castiel settled his wings and glanced around at the borrowed space, the clutter of Styrofoam boxes stacked above the rim of the trash can, the familiar trail of Dean’s clothing from his suitcase to the bed on the left.  The rain had stopped hours before, but a spatter of raindrops still clung to the screen on the other side of the window, and through a gap in the curtains the thick yellow light of a streetlamp flung their shadows over the floor, peppering the debris of discarded shoes and forgotten backpacks and patches of worn carpet, the fraying strings brushed smooth again by the lay of such heavy light.  Castiel stepped soundlessly over an empty chip bag and pulled the curtains closed.  Sam seemed to prefer his privacy.

In the dim glow of a blinking alarm clock, Castiel turned from the window and let his eyes settle over the beds, studying the slow rise and fall of shoulders breathing under the covers.  The clock wasn’t bright enough to illuminate the sleepers, but Castiel didn’t truly need light to see them; he had been standing in the darkness long before humanity invented lamps.  The angel watched in silence as Dean shuffled for a pillow and knocked the television remote to the floor, the clatter as it landed tugging a crease onto Sam’s smooth forehead.  Sam gave a weak, wet cough and rolled over to bury his face in his own pillow.

It had been four days since Castiel had met Sam on a rain-washed sidewalk, perhaps half a mile from this same dark hotel room—three days since he had been called back to receive a stringent reprimand from Dean for leaving his brother out in the torrential rain, which had settled into Sam’s lungs in the form of a lingering chest cold, the reason, Castiel suspected, for the additional fleece blanket thrown over Sam’s long legs.  To Dean’s knowledge, that was the last time the angel had looked in on them.  In reality, this was the fourth night he had appeared without a sound in the hours between midnight and dawn and made his soft way across the disorder of the hotel room to stand at the edge of Dean’s bed, looking down at the older hunter and searching for the shadows of hellfire on his face.

Sam had said it was Hell that tormented his brother, that terrorized him with pain deeper than any wound.  Sam was not wrong.  But Dean had never revealed to the younger Winchester the details of those months within the pit, so Castiel knew Sam could only be imagining what specters might torture Dean in his unconscious hours.  The angel had looked into Dean’s dreams that first night, four nights ago, and had seen what he’d expected to see—Dean with a poker in one hand and a whip in the other, massacring the sinners, fanning the flames.  Then he had brushed his fingers against Dean’s forehead and forced his mind blank, and watched the man’s face clear under the shadow of his retracting hand.

He had not known what to do at first, when Sam stared back at him through spitting rain and the light of a single streetlamp and told him that Dean was suffering, drowning under the weight of memories from Hell.  The Winchesters were his duty, an assignment from the highest echelons in Heaven, and their well-being was his responsibility, but he was unsure how far that responsibility extended—past their physical forms into their private thoughts, even into their dreams?  But he had withdrawn nonetheless to search out an answer, because Sam had asked, his expression crumbling under the waves of the rain—because Sam had said _please_.  No one had ever made a request of Castiel by saying _please_ before.  Prayer was so far beyond courtesy that _please_ was unnecessary, and Dean simply expected what he asked for, his tone somewhere between a request and a command.

The _please_ had surprised Castiel, caught his attention.  _Please_ was what humans said to each other.  So he had departed immediately to search for an answer, and every night when he returned to pacify Dean’s dreams, he glanced at the second bed and the figure asleep beneath the covers, and wondered why Sam had said it, that tiny, powerful word.

With steps as silent as the shadows, Castiel moved away from the window and into the corridor between the two beds, looking down at his charge.  Dean was stretched out on his back, half of his face hidden in the curve of his spare pillow; still Castiel could see enough of his expression to determine that Dean was sleeping peacefully for once, the lines of his face relaxed as he worked his lips over meaningless sounds.  The angel brushed against Dean’s subconscious long enough to catch glimpses of long green fields, children running and a frog in a plastic cup—then he drew back, leaving the dreams as they were.  A tangle of drained beer cans on the nightstand caught his attention, their crumpled edges glittering in the glow of the alarm clock—but Castiel doubted there were enough for a habitual alcoholic like Dean to have medicated himself into tranquility, and the angel allowed himself to wonder if his nightly interventions were truly making a difference somehow.  Perhaps the fire behind Dean’s eyelids was dimmer now than when he’d started.

From the parking lot came the slow shudder of a car awakening, a stuttered collection of sounds Castiel had learned to recognize—the jerk of ignition, the rumble of the engine, the thrum of an accelerator pulsing under a leaden foot as the tires whispered over the wet asphalt.  Castiel straightened and glanced at the clock.  The time meant nothing in particular to him, except that it was later than it had been when he’d arrived and he had learned not to linger in the dark, lest his continued presence eventually rouse one or the other Winchester from even the deepest dreams—but as he turned from the clock, the angel’s eyes caught on Sam, curled in on himself one bed over, and he stopped.

Sam was still asleep—had barely shifted since Castiel slid the curtains closed, with his face hidden in a white pillowcase and his hands fisted in the overlap of thin hotel blankets.  Castiel could see a few pinpricks of sweat beading on the young man’s forehead, and as he watched Sam struggled to take a deep breath and rolled onto his back, straining against his congested lungs.  The angel hesitated, one hand curling into a fist at his side.

It was not the place of angels to take sickness from man—sickness and sadness and mortality were like the rising sun or the shiver of leaves in autumn, a thousand interlocking parts of creation as it had been laid out for God’s most beloved children.  But it was not the place of angels to give sickness, either, and as he stared down at Sam’s fitful expression, Castiel could not stop himself from remembering Sam at the mercy of the downpour, his arms wrapped across his chest, his shoulders hunched as he stared at Castiel with those sorrowful hazel eyes.  He hadn’t known to bring Sam in from the rain.  Humans were such breakable creatures; he didn’t understand, yet, where the limits were.  But he hadn’t meant to harm Sam with his ignorance—and as the young man took another wheezing breath, his ribs pushing helplessly out against the limits of his flesh, Castiel lifted his hand and pressed his fingertips to Sam’s warm forehead, sending a current of soothing grace through the sleeping figure.  Sam took a deep breath, his lungs suddenly clear, and exhaled into a sigh—then he wrinkled his nose and rolled over to bury himself in the pillows once more, kicking unconscious feet back and forth under the blankets.

Castiel let his hand slip back to his side, and wondered about the twinge at the corner of his lips, a sensation like something trying to curl, just a little.  “Sleep well, Sam,” he murmured into the darkness.  Tomorrow Sam would wake from his dreams well-rested, with a clearer head and an easier inhale; Castiel wondered if he would wonder.  Then he unfurled his wings and surrendered himself to the flight, and decided it didn’t matter—because the rain had stopped, and Sam was warm again, and Castiel would try to keep him that way.


	10. Rain III

Whenever Dean said _I love you_ to Sam, it was usually either preceded by a near-fatal injury or followed by an hour of puking copious amounts of alcohol into the toilet.  Last night had been the latter.  In some ways it was a testament to how much better Dean was doing, that instead of going out to a bar he brought back a couple of action movies and the gnarliest-looking bottle of ninety-proof, bottom-shelf vodka that Sam had ever seen.

Sam had taken one drink before spewing the entire mouthful into the wicker trashcan.  He couldn’t even bring himself to care that the basket was now probably always going to smell like a cheap drink, and might even be a fire hazard to smoking occupants.  It probably hadn’t helped that he had already been sick before accepting a glass of Dean’s battery acid.  But his brother had downed glass after glass, staring at Sam when he thought his brother wasn’t looking, and Sam thought he recognized the signs of someone trying to get up the nerve to say something, so he let it alone.  He knew all of the things Dean could tell him might require a little liquid courage.

In the end, though, either Dean changed his mind and consciously decided not to share, or the alcohol poisoned him so quickly he moved between buzzed, brave, sloshed, slammed all the way to slaughtered too fast to remember who he was much less what he wanted to tell Sam— _I love you,_ man, apparently, while Bruce Willis beat up some kind of terrorists or Nazis or something.  Dean rammed the back of his hand into Sam’s nose throwing his arm around Sam’s shoulder; then he turned a sickly pale color and ran toward the bathroom.

Or he would have, if his foot hadn’t caught in the bedspread Sam had been tossing on and off, unable to get comfortable between the coughs and the fever.  Instead he slid toward the floor, kicking his legs, and then projectile vomited into the wall.  It was a late night for both of them, and by the end Sam was feeling sicker than ever.  Too sick to wait up and watch Castiel at his brother’s bedside.  It just hurt too much.

He slept fitfully, tossing and turning, trying to get to sleep; but somehow in the morning he felt better, well rested, breath free of crackling.  Maybe it was because Dean had drunkenly laughed himself to sleep, and though his drunk ass was more trouble than it was worth Sam loved that sound.  Maybe it was because at some point in the night the rain had cleared up, and everything was bright and sunny, water droplets sparking on leaves and signs.  Or maybe it was something else.  Dean was groaning and grunting like a caveman without a single actual word, and he slung a pillow with deadly accuracy at Sam when the tall hunter pulled the curtain back to peek outside.

“You’re lucky I’m feeling better,” Sam told the back of his brother’s head.  “I’ll take the movies back and pick you up some coffee.” Dean mumbled something into his pillow that sounded kind of like _your bitchy voice is grating_ , but the tall hunter chose to ignore it, gathering the DVDs and fishing out the car keys.

Luckily the DVDs had the address of the rental store right on the sides of their generic boxes, and Sam parked the car easily, enjoying the lingering smell of the rain as he ran the discs to the drop box.  He had been prepared to hunker down through a terrible flu, the type that would make them hole up somewhere for a whole week with Sam wishing to brain himself on the tiles and Dean going stir crazy without a hunt, but there were still small miracles it seemed. 

Sam barely glanced at the small shop or the girl in the apron behind the counter when he ordered the pair of coffees, asking for their strongest brew for Dean and black for himself.  Hopefully it would be scalding hot and bitter enough to take the roof off of his mouth and shake any lingering tremors.  Then they could decide what to do. 

Sam parked the Impala in the lot, stacking the two coffee cups as he juggled the keys and closing the door with his hip.  He settled the drinks one in either hand, not bothering to fish out the room key.  He had just lifted one brown shoe to kick against the door when he heard a muffled sound from within: Dean’s laughter.

Sam lowered his foot slowly, looking over to the open window that the sound was pouring out of.  His first thought was that his brother was on the phone, though Sam didn’t know who he would have called while hung over, or who he would be laughing with this early—not Bobby if he had called at this hour for sure.  Then he heard the second voice, the low, deep rumble that was becoming so familiar to Sam.  _Cas._

Sam found himself frozen to the spot.  He knew he should just knock or fish out his card and go in.  _Go in,_ his brain told him. _Just go in_.  Sam found himself moving closer to the window.  He kept himself out of the open space where the curtains had been drawn back on one side, leaning against the wall and staring at the coffees in his hand.  Sometimes Sam wondered what was wrong with him.

“Dude, when I throw you something, you’re not supposed to stand there like a dunce—you’re supposed to catch it.  Think fast means get those hands up.”

Dean’s loud hyena laugh was as clear as if he had been standing right next to Sam. Castiel’s answer was not.  It was low, the tone smooth, but the words indistinguishable.

“Naw, just consider this a free life lesson.” He could hear Dean’s footsteps clunking around the room, and Sam was grateful that it seemed Dean’s hangover wasn’t as bad as he’d first feared.  Castiel was speaking again, and though Sam leaned as close to the window as he dared, laying the back of his head against the tan siding of the wall, the only thing he could make out was his brother’s name, Dean shooting back an insult and a laugh.

It was easy, light—and remembering his own fumbling attempts at conversation with the angel, Sam suddenly felt jealously squeezing in his gut.  It seemed so effortless for Dean somehow, to draw the angel in, to talk to him, show him things about the world.  The tall hunter closed his eyes for a moment, taking a breath and pushing back at the feelings.

That was Dean’s right, after all—his guardian angel.  It was supposed to be that easy, and it was Sam, as always, making things harder.  The tall hunter opened his eyes, sagging all the way against the wall, careful not to spill the drinks, and listening to what he could hear of the conversation within.  The sun was bright against the clouds, already chasing away puddles from the sidewalks and glistening from the side of the Impala.  He knew he just had to figure this out—because Dean was happier than he’d been in a while, and that was because of Cas, and if the angel had a thought to spare for Sam every now and then, that would be enough, it really would.  The tall hunter leaned against the wall, feeling the sun warming him and just listening, waiting for the right time to show up.  Dean would bitch about his coffee not being hot, but it was the right thing to do.


	11. Afterthought

Since the moment he had first been assigned to the Winchesters, Castiel had never stopped listening.  He had listened before, from time to time over the millennia: an impartial observer tapping occasionally into the chorus of dreams and radio signals rising up from the human cacophony.  His name had made its way into books, and every once in a while someone would pray to him specifically, a little voice tugging at the back of his mind; Castiel listened to those prayers with detached curiosity, the wishes of beings so much smaller than him that their desires were often unintelligible to him, though he spoke every tongue.  But answering prayers was not his responsibility, and Castiel had never come to those who called out his name.  Not until the Winchesters.

The Winchesters he came to.  Not because Dean Winchester was a brazen, irreverent creature who called Castiel at his whims, just to see if he would come—they were an assignment from Heaven, and so Castiel could not bring himself to ignore any call, no matter how strong his suspicion of its insignificance.  Sometimes he appeared to Dean and disappeared again just as quickly, as soon as he understood the human’s motives.  But there had been other times, at least a few, when he had genuinely been needed.  Those were the times he could not dismiss, and that was the reason Castiel had not stopped listening since the brothers were assigned to him, but instead remained ever open to communication, one ear cocked toward the Earth for the softest mention of his name.

Dean Winchester preferred to shout.

_Hey, Castiel!  You up there?_

Castiel halted midway through a thought, his conference with the archangels who oversaw his garrison giving way at once to the summons of that clamorous, impetuous voice.

_Not trying to bother you with our, uh—what did you call it?  Oh, yeah—problems of lesser beings.  But if you’ve got a second, we are royally screwed at the moment and we’re gonna be ant food if you don’t get your holy ass down here.  You know, when it’s convenient._

Castiel didn’t bother to dismiss himself.  He felt a flutter of confusion from the archangels as he disappeared, hurtling toward the Earth in intangible form—but in a fraction of a second he was too far away to sense them anymore, and he put aside the lingering impression of their disapproval to land, a fully corporeal being, under the dark boughs of a pine forest, the yellowed needles and patches of stale snow that carpeted the ground glowing in the last of the sunset light filtering between the trees.  Castiel folded his wings and peered through the labyrinth of trunks.  The Winchesters were nowhere in sight, and for a moment Castiel wondered if he had somehow landed wrong, for the first time in his immortal life.  Then the voice that had paused in its call to wait for a response started up again, and Castiel realized where the Winchesters were: in a pit twice as deep as they were tall, littered with broken sticks and fallen leaves, and diving into the earth like a chasm a few centimeters from the tips of his shoes.

Dean appeared to be in a foul mood.

“Come on, you overgrown cockatoo—we’re in a serious jam here,” Dean shouted from the depths of the pit, his head thrown back to address the pine boughs shutting out the last of the daylight.  Sam was standing at his brother’s side, slumped over to lean heavily against the dirt wall with tangles of pine needles snarled in his hair.  Dean waited a beat and then threw up his hands.  “Damn it, Cas—you’re turning out to be a pretty crappy guardian angel, you know that?  Is it that much to ask for you to pull your head out of your ass for one minute and—”

“I’m here, Dean,” Castiel broke in.  He shifted at the edge of the pit, sending a few crumbles of dirt down into the hollow as both Winchesters spun to search for him, green and hazel eyes locking on his form silhouetted against the darkening forest.  Dean exhaled heavily.

“Oh,” the older hunter said, the closest to gratitude Castiel was likely to receive from him.  Then the momentary flash of relief on his face morphed into a scowl.  “Well, say something next time, you awkward jackass.  Don’t just stand around in a trench coat staring at people down a hole.” Dean blinked twice.  “I’ve seen that horror movie.”

“Shut up, Dean,” Sam said through his sigh, sending Castiel the smallest sliver of a smile in greeting.  Dean twisted to punch his brother in the shoulder, but he turned around again before he could see the sharp wince that flashed across Sam’s face.  Castiel noted the younger hunter’s expression and then bent carefully to kneel at the edge of the pit, examining the sheer clay walls.

“Why are you down there?” he asked.

Dean rolled his eyes.  “Gee, I don’t know, Cas—maybe we got tired of running through the forest after a psychotic werewolf-slash-mountain-hermit and getting slapped in the face by Douglas firs every five seconds and we decided to take a break in here—you know, have a barbeque, invite some friends.  Why do you think?”

Sam tipped his head back against the wall of the pit.  “They’re not fir trees, Dean—they’re Ponderosa Pine.”

Dean spared a glance at Sam over his shoulder.  “Well, look who’s the Jolly Green Giant all of a sudden.”

Sam wrinkled his nose.  “That’s not… whatever,” he finished with a sigh, pulling weary hands down his face as he closed his eyes.  “Just stop screwing around, okay, Dean?”

“That time of the month again already?” Dean shot back.  Then his attention returned to Castiel, green eyes angry as usual above his impatient frown.  “Basically, we’re down here because Carl Jagen, werewolf-slash-hermit-slash-conspiracy-nut, built pit traps all over the woods to throw off the government scientists he thinks put a microchip in his head, and it was a dumb move to pull our FBI badges.” Sam tipped his head as if to agree with that, though his eyes were still closed.  Dean lifted his eyebrows.  “Your turn.  Why the hell’d it take you so long to get here?”

Castiel narrowed his eyes.  “I was in a meeting.”

“Are you shitting me?” Dean demanded.

Castiel felt himself frown.  “No,” he decided after a moment.

“Perfect,” Dean grumbled.  Then he glared up at Castiel again, his palms up, though the angel doubted his pose of supplication truly conveyed his sincerity.  “Well?  You going to get us out of here already, or should we just wait until the full moon comes up and see if Carl’s any less homicidal once he needs a full-body wax?”

Castiel pressed his lips together, trying not to feel a ripple of annoyance.  This was Dean Winchester as Castiel had come to know him over the span of the long days: brash, blunt, impatient rather than thankful for the graces he was given.  He looked at them down in the earth, such children of men—their chests heaving with labored breath, their clothing torn and matted with badges of blood, their fingernails caked with black dirt from trying to scratch their way out of the pit.  And Dean Winchester was impatient with him.  Then he caught Sam’s eyes, peering up at him with a darkness like remorse, and Castiel reminded himself that it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t here for Dean—he was here for Heaven.  Castiel unfurled his wings and knew them again for children, just children, and then he stretched out one arm, reaching into the pit as far as he could.

“Take my hand.”

In the fraction of a second before he took flight, Castiel noted that Sam’s fingers were much colder than Dean’s, and wondered why.

He set them down again a short distance from the trap, landing carefully on the carpet of needles.  Dean bent to brace his hands against the knees of his ripped jeans, and Sam lurched backward until his shoulders collided with the trunk of a large Ponderosa; the younger hunter flinched but showed no signs of stepping away, sagging back against the tree instead and raking dirty fingers through his disheveled hair.  Castiel caught his half-lidded eyes and Sam struggled to stand a little straighter.

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam said, his voice a rasp in the gathering dusk.  “Sorry.  We weren’t exactly watching where we were going, and… just, sorry to pull you away from something important—”

“You know what’s important, Sam?” Dean broke in.  “Us not getting ganked by a paranoid werewolf because we couldn’t climb out of a damn hole and he’d already taken out the cell tower.  What were we supposed to do?” Dean clenched his fingers into the white threads of jean strung across his open knees, and then hissed, jerking his right hand up to his chest.  “Fuck and a bucket of monkeys,” Dean growled under his breath, cradling his fingers against his stained green jacket.  “How did he dig that fucking pit in the first place?  That clay is hard as concrete—I think I broke eight fingers just hitting the bottom.”

Sam retreated back against the tree as Castiel took a step toward the older hunter, assessing his charge with a brief flare of grace.  “Only one finger is broken,” he told Dean, unsurprised to find the man’s expression pinched into a glare.

“Oh—well, that’s fine, then,” Dean returned.  “Who wants ten working fingers anyway?” Castiel decided that was sarcasm—Dean’s primary form of communication, in the angel’s experience.  Dean took a hard step forward and a twig splintered under his boot, punctuating the thin distance between him and Castiel.  “Would you fix it already?  We’ve still gotta finish this hunt and I’m not doing it without my middle finger.  Probably gonna need that.”

Castiel narrowed his eyes but chose not to inquire.  He just lifted two fingers to Dean’s forehead, and heard the hunter suck in a breath as his healing grace flowed through him, righting his broken bones and erasing the superficial cuts and bruises of a careless pursuit.  As Dean reeled back from his hand, Castiel turned his gaze momentarily to the other Winchester, so still and pale on the other side of the stand of pines.

Sam’s eyes were still half-closed, his brows drawn together as if he were concentrating intensely on each shallow breath moving in and out of his lips.  Castiel felt himself frown.  Sam was quiet today—quieter than he usually was when Castiel appeared to him.  Sam was always full of information, about snow angels and cold weather practices and card games and old books, and the folklore of so many different places.  Castiel didn’t know why Sam told him about these things, and he didn’t understand most of them.  But he listened all the same—hadn’t stopped listening since he had first been assigned to the Winchesters.  Sam’s silence now bothered Castiel, made some part of him uneasy.  But he reminded himself that Sam was always quieter when Dean was present to talk for him, slipping at once into his brother’s shadow—especially in Castiel’s presence, Sam stepped back, as though the angel had come for Dean alone.  And as Dean caught his breath, surged back to his full height and shook off the last of his grace, Castiel dismissed his disquiet, turning away from the younger hunter.  Dean never held anything back, after all, had never hesitated to ask for what he wanted.  He had no reason to think Sam would be any different.

“Shit, Cas—you guys should package that,” Dean was saying.  He flicked his wrist once and then cracked the knuckles of his right hand, a smirk creasing his face.  “Next time I have a hangover, you’re definitely getting a call.” He looked up and gave Castiel a flippant nod—a dismissal, Castiel assumed—and then turned to stride off into the trees, summoning his brother with a glance over his shoulder.  “Sam—let’s move it.  I dropped the gun somewhere between here and that tree where he strung up the missing hiker.  See if we can’t find it before Ugly comes back.”

Castiel wasn’t certain why he didn’t disappear.  He had done what he was called to do, and he had unfinished business in Heaven—the archangels would accept the reasons for his abrupt departure, but they wouldn’t be pleased.  He had no interest in loping after the Winchesters through the twilight woods.  Still something made him hesitate, and against his instincts Castiel stood where he was for a long moment and watched the hunched forms of the hunters moving away from him, scouring the ground in the last of the light.  It took him a minute to realize that he was watching Sam, his sharp eyes picking apart the details of the young man’s movements—an intermittent limp, the way his left knee crumpled when he took a bad step, he way he dug his fingers into the trunk of every passing tree as he trailed Dean through the forest.  The thick crimson stain disfiguring the back of his jeans just above the left knee—and then he caught a glimpse of a tear in the fabric, a rip in the flesh of Sam’s thigh, and his wings came unbound at his back.  Castiel landed in front of Sam at the same instant that Dean straightened with his gun in one hand, and the younger hunter nearly slammed into him, pulling up short with a gasping inhale.

“Cas!  What are—”

“You are injured,” Castiel interrupted him.  Sam tried to take a step back, but the angel reached out and fastened one hand over his shoulder, his fingers anchoring in the dirt crusted to Sam’s brown coat.  Castiel squinted up at Sam through the thinning light.  “You did not tell me.  Why?”

Sam worked his tongue against his teeth.  “Cas…” The young hunter shook his head and reached out to brace one hand on the nearest tree, working his fingers into the crags between the thick flakes of bark. “It wasn’t… it’s not really like that.  I…”

“The hell do you mean he’s injured?” Dean demanded, as he tucked the gun into his waistband and shouldered his way back into the conversation, past Castiel.  He knocked the angel’s hand from Sam’s shoulder and replaced it with his own.  “Sammy?” he pressed, pinning his younger brother’s gaze.

Sam’s eyes followed Castiel’s arm as it fell back to his side.  “Dean—”

“His left thigh,” Castiel interjected.

“Show me,” Dean ordered, shaking his brother’s shoulders.  Sam looked between them both and balked.

“Dean, it’s not that bad,” the younger hunter insisted, lifting one hand to grip Dean’s arm in return.  His eyes flitted over to Castiel, and the angel saw supplication in them, as if pleading with him to intercede—but though Castiel did not understand Dean’s fingernails digging into his Sam’s collarbone or why he shook his younger brother again, Dean knew Sam far better than he did, and he deferred to the older hunter’s judgment.  Sam’s eyes darted back to his brother.  “Plus, I can’t really show you without taking my pants off, and I’m not going to do that in the middle of a forest when there could be a werewolf—”

Dean was not a patient soul.  Castiel knew that all too well.  So he was not surprised that Dean abruptly tired of his brother’s protests and dropped to his knees in the dead pine needles, jerking Sam’s leg around to reveal the rent in his jeans and the jagged wound within, four inches long and still bleeding—but as Sam cried out and nearly collapsed to the ground, only a tight grip on his brother’s shoulders keeping him upright, Castiel wondered if there had been a better way, and wished, for just a moment, that he knew what it was.

Sam was breathing through his teeth.  “Ah— _shit_.  Dean—”

“Shit is right,” Dean growled back at him, ripping the hole in Sam’s jeans a little farther so he could get a better look at the wound.  He glanced once at the sky, far beyond the canopy of pine boughs, as if cursing the oncoming darkness.  “This is bad, Sam—really bad.  How the fuck did this happen?”

Sam threw a glance at Castiel and then focused on his hands, bunching the worn leather of Dean’s coat into new folds of wrinkles.  “Um… you remember those sharp sticks in the pit?  When I fell… yeah.”

“Damn it, Sam,” Dean swore under his breath.  “That was half an hour ago.  Why didn’t you say anything when Cas was fixing me?” Sam took a breath as though to answer, his expression indecisive—but Dean had already moved on, and he jerked his head back far enough to glare at Castiel, his anger simmering behind those narrowed green eyes.  “And you—the hell is wrong with you, Cas?  Standing around like a jackass while Sam’s bleeding out through his sneaker.”

Castiel met those eyes but said nothing.  He had nothing to say.  He had not checked Sam over, in spite of his suspicious—had not even asked the younger hunter if he were injured.  He had failed in the duties given to him by Heaven because he understood so little of Earth, because he had assumed that all humans would behave like Dean Winchester in the presence of an angel, even Sam—Sam who always apologized for Dean’s excesses, who often cleaned up his brother’s mess, who left so many sentences unfinished—Sam who had given him a cup of tea to hold in his hands though angels needed no warmth from outside.  Sam who had reached for his hand with such awe, the day they first met.  Sam who always stepped back when Dean pushed forward.  Castiel didn’t know why he’d assumed that Sam, of all people, would be just like Dean.

Sam was looking down at the top of his brother’s head, breathing heavily now; Castiel could hear his ribs vibrating, just a little, with each inhale.  “Seriously, Dean, stop it—okay?  It’s not that big a deal.  It’s not like I opened the femoral artery or anything.”

“How do you know?” Dean demanded.

Sam gave a hoarse laugh.  “If I had, I’d have bled out, like, twenty minutes ago.”

Suddenly Castiel understood it all for what it was: the shortness of breath, the dryness of his tongue, his shaking hands—the symptoms of a heart slowing down.  “Stand aside,” he ordered, stepping forward until he was right behind Dean.  The older Winchester seemed reluctant, but he got to his feet and out of the way all the same, leaving Castiel face to face with Sam.  The angel studied those dark hazel eyes as he raised one hand.

“Be still,” he said, the words soft under the twilight.  Sam flinched when Castiel’s fingertips settled on his forehead; and Castiel wasn’t sure why, but he found himself speaking again, in the fractions of a second it took to gather his grace—qualifying what he was about to do as he had never done before.  “This will not hurt,” he promised.  Then he let his grace go, and it surged through Sam, snapping the younger hunter’s head back in a harsh intake of breath.

In an instant it was gone, and Sam’s face cleared, the pain disappearing along with his wound.  But even in its absence, Sam wore a strange expression, one Castiel couldn’t read—somewhere between relief and longing, doubt and resignation.  Castiel didn’t know of any emotion that sat at the crossroads of those four.

Dean’s voice broke through their stalemate.

“Sammy?  You okay?”

Sam shook himself, backing away from Castiel as the angel’s hand slipped back to his side once more.  The younger hunter reached behind him and braced one hand against a tree, then lifted his left leg, craning his neck to get a look at the site of his wound.  “Yeah, no—all better,” he said, giving Dean a reassuring nod.  “I’m going to need a new pair of pants, but—”

A sudden crack split the air above their heads, and Castiel glanced up in time to see a branch of lightning splitting the darkening sky, leaving behind the scent of ozone and disapproval.  Dean swore under his breath.  “Great—because the day’s been going so well.  Now it’s going to rain, too.”

Castiel turned away from Sam to meet the older hunter’s eyes.  “That isn’t rain,” he said.  “I’m being called back to Heaven.  I’ve been away too long.”

Dean raised his eyebrows, one accusing finger leveled at the sky.  “That’s for you?”

Castiel shifted his feet.  “I told you I was in a meeting.”

“Shit,” Dean said.  But his face was blank and his posture loose, and somehow it sounded more like a compliment than profanity.  He shoved his hands down in his pockets and sent Castiel a shrug.  “Well, you better get out of here, then.  I don’t want them smiting anybody just ’cause they’re pissed at you.”

Castiel nodded once, wondering if that were what gratitude looked like on Dean Winchester, when it didn’t just make him angry.  Then he turned back to Sam.  The younger hunter had managed to pull some sort of a smile onto his face.

“Cas…” he started.

“Sam,” the angel returned.  Then he stepped toward him, moving until the tips of his shoes touched the tips of Sam’s, and stared up into those wide hazel eyes—such a complicated color.  Castiel searched his mind for the right words.  “You are not an afterthought,” he said at last.  “I come for both of you.  Do not conceal your wounds from me.” He wanted to say more, because he wasn’t sure he had made himself clear, but another flash of lightning overhead reminded him that his time had already expired.  He glanced up and then took a step back from Sam, his gaze oscillating between the Winchesters.  “Be more careful,” he told Dean.  But without intention he found himself looking at Sam as he finished, “If you need me again… I am always listening.”

Sam wore that complicated expression once again.  Castiel caught himself almost wishing he could stay a short while longer, try to decipher the meaning behind that look.  But he took his leave without another word, letting his wings uncoil from his back and lift him out of the mortal frame.  His allegiance was to Heaven, not to the Winchesters—but all the same, as the Earth fell away from him and his corporeal form disintegrated into light, Castiel found himself thinking that he would have to pay more attention to Sam, from now on, and that caring for the Winchesters might not be as simple as he’d originally guessed.


	12. Latin I

Sam curled his toes around the edge of the furnace against the wall, tipping the wooden chair onto its back legs.  The furnace was on full blast, and the socks that were not quite the same blue, since he had let Dean do the laundry, were the only protection he had against the heat he could already feel seeping through the cotton.

Sam leaned back farther, tipping his head to stare at the pebbly ceiling.  The whole room was airy and white, with freshly painted walls and soft yellow bedspreads that even Sam had to admit were a little too Easter paisley.  He had already seen the dipping trim and lacy curtains on the website before he had booked the room, though, and so he’d played at being shocked and horrified and paid three days upfront while his brother was busy laughing at a vase on a flowery doily, which quickly turned into coughing into his elbow.

Sam relaxed his knees, dropping his chair forward and looking over at his brother with a half-exasperated, half-fond expression.  Dean was tucked under the yellow feather comforter, his face half hidden in the pristine pillow he was drooling on.  Dean shifted slightly, as though he could feel Sam’s gaze on him, and wiggled farther under the covers.  Sam just shook his head, some of his hair sliding into his eyes.  He pushed it back with one hand, using his socked toe to bump up the heater a couple more degrees.

He was already uncomfortably hot, wearing only a white t-shirt and a loose pair of exercise pants he had rolled up above his knees, but there was no one there to see him.  Sam glanced around the room furtively as though to confirm that before settling all the legs of the chair firmly on the floor and trying to concentrate on the computer.  He had found an old Latin text that seemed like it might contain some pretty powerful exorcisms, but naturally the language was not only ancient but also stylized.  Sam had spent the last hour and a half squinting at his computer screen and copying the script as exactly as possible into a notebook.

It was moments like these that Sam considered whether they shouldn’t buy a printer and start lugging it around with them.  But Dean would just call it a waste of space.  And that wouldn’t actually be enough to put Sam off, given that Dean often said the same thing about the collapsible shovel and the bungee cords that had saved their asses more than once—but Sam had enough memories from college to be positive that somehow the printer would always be out of ink, the supposedly ubiquitous cartridges nowhere to be found, and the last piece of white paper eaten by a jam.  Looking back, he wondered sometimes if his printer hadn’t been possessed.  He’d junked the thing down the garbage shoot, but in retrospect it deserved a salt and burn.

Sam slid his feet to the edge of the wall heater where it wasn’t quite as hot, realizing he had let his focus drift again.  He tipped the chair back once more with a sigh.

“Sam.” 

The tall hunter jerked in surprise, his feet pushing off of the furnace and making his chair overbalance.  Sam’s eyes widened, and he didn’t even have time to say _Cas_ before he was heading for a painful meeting with the floor.

The jarring force of his head bounding off the carpet never came, though, and instead Sam found himself staring up at Castiel’s chin upside down.   The angel had caught the entire chair with one hand, holding Sam up effortlessly a foot from the floor.  His trench coat rustled around his form as he tilted his head, staring at Sam with an expression that made the tall hunter want to laugh.  Sometimes he forgot how strong the angel was.

“Hey, Cas,” he breathed out finally. “I didn’t hear you come in.” Cas nodded as though he had already figured that out, or maybe just to acknowledge that Sam had been speaking—he was never really sure with the angel whether Cas was listening to them or just recognizing the sounds they made, like a pet owner.

Castiel levered Sam slowly back up until all four of the chair legs were firmly on the floor. 

“Thanks,” Sam said, glancing over to Dean to see whether his antics had woken his brother.  Dean was now no more than a cocoon of blankets, with a single patch of spiky hair sticking out of the top.  He gave a soft moan, and Sam froze, reaching out to grab Castiel’s arm and still the angel as well.

A glance upward revealed Castiel staring at him with a curious expression, and Sam’s lips twitched.  He let go of the other man’s arm, bringing his finger up to his lips, before deciding belatedly that the gesture might not mean anything to the angel.

“Dean’s sick,” Sam said softly, pulling Castiel down closer so he could whisper in his ear.  “He really needs to sleep, so I don’t want to wake him up.” Castiel’s eyes were somehow more expressive close up, and Sam couldn’t help a strange flutter in his stomach when the angel turned to look at Sam, their faces only inches apart.  He nodded slowly and Sam swallowed reflexively, suddenly not sure what to say.

And then just as suddenly Castiel wasn’t there.  Sam thought for one moment that the angel had just disappeared, misunderstanding Sam as he so often did Dean and thinking he was being sent away—but then the soft rustle of the tan coat drew his gaze across the room.  Castiel stood beside his brother’s bed, an echo of the position he had taken at night weeks before.  The mimicry sent a strange shiver though Sam.

Part of him wanted to look away, but instead he found his feet climbing back toward that heater, holding his ground.  Because it was daytime, not night.  Gauzy curtains painted the room with a warm glow.  The angel reached out a gentle hand to lay against Dean’s head for a moment, or at least the part of the lump Sam assumed was his brother’s head.  He was always so gentle, and Sam just knew, watching him now, that Cas was always being careful with them—trying his best in his own fumbling way.  A genuine smile stretched across his face as he watched his brother’s guardian angel, realizing just how far Castiel had come.

A second later the angel was striding back over to him, and despite how badly it had gone before Sam couldn’t stop himself from rocking back and forth in the chair.

“Did you heal him?” Sam asked.

“No.” Cas frowned slightly, and Sam considered the possibility that he and Dean weren’t the only ones constantly perplexed by misunderstanding.  “But now he will not wake up.” 

“Really?” Sam let out a puff of laughter, looking over at the yellow blanket caterpillar.  Dean wasn’t moaning anymore, wasn’t even shifting; he was out like a corpse, and if Cas hadn’t been his brother’s guardian angel, Sam might’ve be tempted to go check his pulse.  Well, he _had_ wanted his brother asleep…

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam said with a smile, looking up as the angel came to his stand by his elbow.

“Do you need anything, Sam?” Castiel asked. 

 _No_ was on the tip of Sam’s tongue, or _nothing_.  Telling the angel that with Dean sick they would just stick around here for a few days, that he probably didn’t need to drop by again anytime soon.  But then Cas’s words were somehow there in the forefront of his mind:  _You are not an afterthought._

The silence had gone on too long.  It should have been awkward, but Cas just continued to stand there blankly, and Sam wondered suddenly if maybe the angel would have stood there forever just waiting for Sam to answer.  He swallowed past the lump in his throat at the thought of the angel here for him.  Dean was already taken care of—possibly literally.  His eyes scanned the completely still form again before he turned to meet Cas’s gaze.

He had a feeling he was trying to tell the angel something, but he wasn’t even sure what it was.  He licked his lips, letting his eyes search Cas’s face.  His dark eyes seemed more serious somehow at this moment, like maybe he was searching for something too.

Sam cleared his throat, breaking their locked gazes and letting his feet sink to the floor.  

“Well, you’re an angel, so your Latin must be really good, right?” he said finally, throwing a smile up over his shoulder.  “Wanna help with a translation?”

And even if Sam wasn’t sure what he really wanted, he was impossibly grateful when Castiel nodded, slowly pulling the other chair over to sit next to him. 

“Here.” Sam pushed the notebook to the space between them, scooting closer until the chairs were side by side.


	13. Latin II

The hotel room where Castiel appeared was dark and cold.  Outside, twilight was falling; the last of the daylight was all that illuminated the room, a dull glow in the white gauze curtains that flickered as the angel settled his wings against his back, searching for movement through the contrast of shadows.  Castiel’s breath bloomed white against the window, and he reached out to touch the top of the furnace, surprised to find the metal cold beneath his fingers.  It didn’t seem to have been used in hours.  Castiel frowned and squinted into the gloom.

Sam had explained, in a murmur that barely reached the angel’s ears over the rustle of pages of careful Latin translation, that the room had been paid for three days in advance, and that they wouldn’t be leaving until Dean recovered from his illness.  It was why he had descended without searching out the Winchesters in particular.  But the room seemed so different from where he’d landed two days before, the furnace creaking and the whole room bright with sunlight and yellow bedspreads, that for a moment Castiel wondered if Sam had been wrong and the Winchesters had left earlier than expected, surrendering the space to darkness and silence.  Then his eyes picked out the shape of a person in one of the beds, and his shoulders relaxed, his long coat swaying around his knees as he moved to the edge of the mattress.

Castiel had expected to find Dean asleep, cocooned in his thick blankets as before.  But the figure in bed was Sam, and he was not resting nearly so peacefully as his brother had been.  The younger Winchester was sleeping half sitting up, leaning heavily against the headboard with his pillows crumpled on either side of him and a clutter of books and papers scattered over his lap.  Even in the near dark, Castiel recognized the neat lines of Sam’s handwriting and the Latin text they had been working through; it seemed Sam had been continuing the translations on his own.  The young man’s skin was flushed, and his breaths came in slow, heavy puffs, the rattle of congestion in his lungs chasing every exhale.  Castiel leaned close enough to see that the hair at Sam’s temples was damp with perspiration, and then he straightened, glancing around the room once more.

Sam had caught Dean’s cold—that much was clear.  It was not an uncommon progression of sickness in man.  Nor was it Castiel’s place to interfere in matters like this, not until the situation was truly dire.  There was no reason not to depart immediately.  But all the same he was struck again by the iciness of the room, and the darkness, and the silence; wherever Dean was, he had been gone a long time.

A single square of paper from the hotel notepad had been placed at the center of the small table, held down by a full can of beer, and Castiel moved to read it.  Dean’s handwriting was nothing like Sam’s, sharp, angled, with tight spacing and often indistinguishable letters.  Castiel squinted to read it, less because of the darkness, which had never bothered him, than because Dean had obviously been in a hurry when he wrote it.  The words were abrupt and direct, like the man who had written them.

_Went for some real food.  Back late.  Can’t stand this girly hotel—we’re leaving tomorrow, so get better already, bitch.  I’ll bring you something._

Castiel glanced back at Sam pressed up against the headboard, his cheeks flushed with the burn of fever, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.  After all this time watching the Winchesters, he still knew so little about them, these infinitely fragile beings—and Dean had been caring for Sam for a very long time, in the small scope of a human life.  Castiel was not sure what grounds he had for doubt.  But he couldn’t help remembering the room as it had been two days before, so warm with the thrum of the furnace, Dean’s covers tucked up around his face, and the way that Sam kept glancing back at his brother, even after Castiel assured him Dean would not wake—just making certain of something, assuring himself of something that was too important to take even an angel’s word for.  He couldn’t help wondering if darkness and cold and solitude were what Sam truly needed, when humanity had tamed fire and built houses and cities and civilizations just to get away from them.

Castiel’s gaze moved to the furnace.  He remembered Sam fiddling with it endlessly as they’d worked through the Latin, one or the other of Sam’s feet in mismatched socks reaching out to press the arrow buttons along the top.  Castiel stepped around the table and bent to press the rising arrow himself.  He kept pressing it until he heard a rattle deep within the metal coils, and the furnace hissed, a current of air rising from the slats along its face.  But the air was cold, and Castiel pressed the button again, kept his hand in front of the stream until he felt the first tendrils of warmth flowing over his borrowed skin.  Then he turned back to Sam, still motionless in the bed. 

He had no reason to stay.  There was nothing he could do.  But he would, all the same—just until the room was a little warmer.

There was no reason Castiel couldn’t wait by the furnace, gauging the growing heat with the pads of his fingers.  Yet somehow he found himself at the edge of Sam’s bed again, looking down at the thick comforter drawn up to his waist, the spread of Latin pages over his legs.  He seemed so different now than the young man who had hunched over a book next to Castiel two days before, his face animated, his eyes following every movement of the angel’s lips as he pronounced the words.  It was strange to Castiel that humans struggled with such simple things, like their own languages—but Sam had been attentive, and eager, and had followed along easily.  Perhaps most surprising, he had wanted answers less than he wanted to learn; Castiel had offered to simply translate the whole texts for him, because Dean had taught him that results were more important to the Winchesters than processes—but Sam had declined, had asked to be included instead, had copied the syllables of each word with his own lips and scribbled notes to himself on blank, loose pages.

Castiel glanced down at the same fingers that had wielded that enthusiastic pen, quiet now as they gripped a few sheets of crumpled paper.  The one on top was chaotic, fragments of phrases and roots bumping up against each other in Sam’s neat, precise script and surrounded by question marks, sometimes several in a row.  A word under his thumb was circled three times; next to it, in capital letters, was written _ASK CAS._   Castiel shifted.  Then he sat down carefully on the edge of the bed and gathered the books and papers into his hands, placing them in neat stacks on the dark wood of the bedside table.

Sam was shivering.  Castiel didn’t notice it until he had finished removing all of the books—and then he wondered why he hadn’t, because Sam’s whole body vibrated with the cold, his lips trembling as they parted for each shallow breath.  Castiel glanced back at the furnace.  He could feel that it was working, soft currents of warm air brushing past him as they spread throughout the space—but it was working very slowly, and the room was very cold.  The rattle in Sam’s chest reminded him suddenly of another night visit, not long ago, the spatter of raindrops stuck to a window screen and bending over Sam’s bed to soothe his breathing, take away the chill of a night walking through the storm—but that had been a gray area, because it was Castiel who left Sam in the rain, and this was not.  God had given suffering to man because He loved man best of all he had created, and it was not for angels to take it away.  Still Castiel lifted one hand and touched the side of Sam’s face, cupping his cheekbone in the hollow of his palm, and wondered how the fever could burn like fire on his skin and make him shiver at the same time.

“Cas?”

It was so much less than a whisper, just the barest inflection in a soft exhale.  It was the way human lips had said his name for a very long time, in the prayers he never answered.  Castiel’s gaze shifted from his hand to the bleary hazel eyes blinking slowly at him, eyelashes hesitating against Sam’s cheeks.  Castiel shifted on the edge of the bed.

“I apologize, Sam.  I didn’t intend to wake you.”

Sam blinked at him twice more, each beat more sluggish than the last.  Then he made a low sound in his throat and closed his eyes a final time, and leaned heavily into the cradle of Castiel’s hand, his breath brushing dry and warm over the angel’s wrist.  Castiel wondered if Sam were dreaming, or thought he was.  Nonetheless he found himself speaking again, his voice rough under the hiss of the rumbling furnace.

“Lie down, Sam.  This is not a sound rest.”

Sam stayed where he was.  Castiel pressed his lips together.  For a moment he contemplated leaving Sam undisturbed, hoping that the warmth would wake him once the room was comfortable again; for another he weighed the possibility of deepening Sam’s sleep as he had Dean’s, and then dragging him onto his back, once there was no chance of waking him.  But something about the way Sam had leaned into his touch made him hesitate, and in the end he lifted his other hand to cup Sam’s shoulder, preparing to ease him down.  It should have been a simple motion, because Sam’s weight was nothing and humans were meant to bend this way—but Sam leaned forward instead of sliding down, and Castiel found he didn’t know how to stop him, not gently enough, could do nothing but keep his hands in their places as Sam crashed softly into his shoulder, his face fever warm against Castiel’s neck.  Castiel stared down into the dark tangle of his hair.

It was not what was intended.  This vessel had not been given to him to hold them up, and his hands were not made for this, pressing warm and stiff into the planes of Sam’s back.  A soldier’s hands were meant for other things.  Castiel didn’t move all the same.  It would have been so simple to undo, so simple to prevent—but he couldn’t help the thought that any movement might wake Sam, and he didn’t want that.  Castiel watched the lines of Sam’s face relaxing, his forehead smoothing out and his lips parting around a soft breath, and felt the pulse of the furnace against his back; then his shoulders relaxed under his coat, and he shifted just a little, just far enough to ease the curve of Sam’s spine and the angle of his arms.  Just enough to feel Sam’s breath whispering under his collarbone.

Castiel wouldn’t stay long.  It wasn’t his job, and they wouldn’t understand.  He would just wait long enough to make sure that Sam wouldn’t wake when he slid down in the bed, and that his would be a peaceful sleep, free of fever dreams.  Just long enough to know that Sam was warm again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's been following this story, and for all of your wonderful comments and encouragement. It's always inspiring to hear that people are enjoying our work. This story marks the end of Stepping Stones, but the next story in the Other Guardian 'verse should be up soon. Come back and read that, too.


End file.
